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Branch target predictor - Wikipedia
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href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9dicteur_de_cible_de_branchement" title="Prédicteur de cible de branchement – French" lang="fr" hreflang="fr" data-title="Prédicteur de cible de branchement" data-language-autonym="Français" data-language-local-name="French" class="interlanguage-link-target"><span>Français</span></a></li><li class="interlanguage-link interwiki-it mw-list-item"><a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_target_predictor" title="Branch target predictor – Italian" lang="it" hreflang="it" data-title="Branch target predictor" data-language-autonym="Italiano" data-language-local-name="Italian" class="interlanguage-link-target"><span>Italiano</span></a></li><li class="interlanguage-link interwiki-ja mw-list-item"><a href="https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%86%E5%B2%90%E5%85%88%E4%BA%88%E6%B8%AC" title="分岐先予測 – Japanese" lang="ja" hreflang="ja" data-title="分岐先予測" data-language-autonym="日本語" data-language-local-name="Japanese" 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<div class="vector-body-before-content"> <div class="mw-indicators"> </div> <div id="siteSub" class="noprint">From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</div> </div> <div id="contentSub"><div id="mw-content-subtitle"></div></div> <div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><div class="shortdescription nomobile noexcerpt noprint searchaux" style="display:none">Part of a computer processor</div> <style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1251242444">.mw-parser-output .ambox{border:1px solid #a2a9b1;border-left:10px solid #36c;background-color:#fbfbfb;box-sizing:border-box}.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+style+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+link+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+style+.ambox,.mw-parser-output .ambox+.mw-empty-elt+link+link+.ambox{margin-top:-1px}html body.mediawiki .mw-parser-output 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.mbox-empty-cell,.mw-parser-output .compact-ambox .hide-when-compact{display:none}</style><table class="box-Multiple_issues plainlinks metadata ambox ambox-content ambox-multiple_issues compact-ambox" role="presentation"><tbody><tr><td class="mbox-image"><div class="mbox-image-div"><span typeof="mw:File"><span><img alt="" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg/40px-Ambox_important.svg.png" decoding="async" width="40" height="40" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg/60px-Ambox_important.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg/80px-Ambox_important.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="40" data-file-height="40" /></span></span></div></td><td class="mbox-text"><div class="mbox-text-span"><div class="multiple-issues-text mw-collapsible"><b>This article has multiple issues.</b> Please help <b><a href="/wiki/Special:EditPage/Branch_target_predictor" title="Special:EditPage/Branch target predictor">improve it</a></b> or discuss these issues on the <b><a href="/wiki/Talk:Branch_target_predictor" title="Talk:Branch target predictor">talk page</a></b>. <small><i>(<a href="/wiki/Help:Maintenance_template_removal" title="Help:Maintenance template removal">Learn how and when to remove these messages</a>)</i></small> <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> <link rel="mw-deduplicated-inline-style" href="mw-data:TemplateStyles:r1251242444"><table class="box-More_citations_needed plainlinks metadata ambox ambox-content ambox-Refimprove" role="presentation"><tbody><tr><td class="mbox-image"><div class="mbox-image-div"><span typeof="mw:File"><a href="/wiki/File:Question_book-new.svg" class="mw-file-description"><img alt="" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png" decoding="async" width="50" height="39" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/75px-Question_book-new.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/100px-Question_book-new.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="512" data-file-height="399" /></a></span></div></td><td class="mbox-text"><div class="mbox-text-span">This article <b>needs additional citations for <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability" title="Wikipedia:Verifiability">verification</a></b>.<span class="hide-when-compact"> Please help <a href="/wiki/Special:EditPage/Branch_target_predictor" title="Special:EditPage/Branch target predictor">improve this article</a> by <a href="/wiki/Help:Referencing_for_beginners" title="Help:Referencing for beginners">adding citations to reliable sources</a>. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.<br /><small><span class="plainlinks"><i>Find sources:</i> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/search?as_eq=wikipedia&q=%22Branch+target+predictor%22">"Branch target predictor"</a> – <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=%22Branch+target+predictor%22+-wikipedia&tbs=ar:1">news</a> <b>·</b> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22Branch+target+predictor%22&tbs=bkt:s&tbm=bks">newspapers</a> <b>·</b> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&q=%22Branch+target+predictor%22+-wikipedia">books</a> <b>·</b> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Branch+target+predictor%22">scholar</a> <b>·</b> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=%22Branch+target+predictor%22&acc=on&wc=on">JSTOR</a></span></small></span> <span class="date-container"><i>(<span class="date">October 2007</span>)</i></span><span class="hide-when-compact"><i> (<small><a href="/wiki/Help:Maintenance_template_removal" title="Help:Maintenance template removal">Learn how and when to remove this message</a></small>)</i></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table> <link rel="mw-deduplicated-inline-style" href="mw-data:TemplateStyles:r1251242444"><table class="box-Update plainlinks metadata ambox ambox-content ambox-Update" role="presentation"><tbody><tr><td class="mbox-image"><div class="mbox-image-div"><span typeof="mw:File"><span><img alt="" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg/42px-Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg.png" decoding="async" width="42" height="34" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg/63px-Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg/84px-Ambox_current_red_Asia_Australia.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="360" data-file-height="290" /></span></span></div></td><td class="mbox-text"><div class="mbox-text-span">This article's <b><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute" title="Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute">factual accuracy</a> may be compromised due to out-of-date information</b>.<span class="hide-when-compact"> Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.</span> <span class="date-container"><i>(<span class="date">March 2017</span>)</i></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table> </div> </div><span class="hide-when-compact"><i> (<small><a href="/wiki/Help:Maintenance_template_removal" title="Help:Maintenance template removal">Learn how and when to remove this message</a></small>)</i></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table> <p>In <a href="/wiki/Computer_architecture" title="Computer architecture">computer architecture</a>, a <b>branch target predictor</b> is the part of a processor that predicts the target, i.e., the address of the instruction that is executed next, of a taken <a href="/wiki/Conditional_branch" class="mw-redirect" title="Conditional branch">conditional branch</a> or unconditional branch instruction before the <a href="/wiki/Jump_target_(computing)" class="mw-redirect" title="Jump target (computing)">target of the branch instruction</a> is computed by the execution unit of the processor. </p><p>Branch target prediction is not the same as <a href="/wiki/Branch_prediction" class="mw-redirect" title="Branch prediction">branch prediction</a>, which guesses whether a conditional branch will be taken or not-taken in a binary manner. </p><p>In more <a href="/wiki/Parallel_processor" class="mw-redirect" title="Parallel processor">parallel processor</a> designs, as the <a href="/wiki/Instruction_cache" class="mw-redirect" title="Instruction cache">instruction cache</a> latency grows longer and the fetch width grows wider, branch target extraction becomes a bottleneck. The recurrence is: </p> <ul><li>Instruction cache fetches block of instructions</li> <li>Instructions in block are scanned to identify branches</li> <li>First predicted taken branch is identified</li> <li>Target of that branch is computed</li> <li><a href="/wiki/Instruction_fetch" class="mw-redirect" title="Instruction fetch">Instruction fetch</a> restarts at branch target</li></ul> <p>In machines where this recurrence takes two cycles, the machine loses one full cycle of fetch after every predicted taken branch. As predicted branches happen every 10 instructions or so, this can force a substantial drop in fetch bandwidth. Some machines with longer instruction cache latencies would have an even larger loss. To ameliorate the loss, some machines implement branch target prediction: given the address of a branch, they predict the target of that branch. A refinement of the idea predicts the start of a sequential run of instructions given the address of the start of the previous sequential run of instructions. </p><p>This predictor reduces the recurrence above to: </p> <ul><li>Hash the address of the first instruction in a run</li> <li>Fetch the prediction for the addresses of the targets of branches in that run of instructions</li> <li>Select the address corresponding to the branch predicted taken</li></ul> <p>As the predictor RAM can be 5–10% of the size of the instruction cache, the fetch happens much faster than the instruction cache fetch, and so this recurrence is much faster. If it were not fast enough, it could be parallelized, by predicting target addresses of target branches. </p> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="See_also">See also</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Branch_target_predictor&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: See also"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Indirect_branch_control" class="mw-redirect" title="Indirect branch control">Indirect branch control</a> (IBC)</li> <li><a href="/wiki/Indirect_branch_prediction_barrier" class="mw-redirect" title="Indirect branch prediction barrier">Indirect branch prediction barrier</a> (IBPB)</li> <li><a href="/wiki/Indirect_branch_restricted_speculation" class="mw-redirect" title="Indirect branch restricted speculation">Indirect branch restricted speculation</a> (IBRS)</li> <li><a href="/wiki/Single_thread_indirect_branch_predictor" class="mw-redirect" title="Single thread indirect branch predictor">Single thread indirect branch predictor</a> (STIBP)</li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Further_reading">Further reading</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Branch_target_predictor&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Further reading"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r1238218222">.mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free.id-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited.id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration.id-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription.id-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}body:not(.skin-timeless):not(.skin-minerva) .mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,body:not(.skin-timeless):not(.skin-minerva) .mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,body:not(.skin-timeless):not(.skin-minerva) .mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,body:not(.skin-timeless):not(.skin-minerva) .mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,body:not(.skin-timeless):not(.skin-minerva) .mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background-size:contain;padding:0 1em 0 0}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:var(--color-error,#d33)}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:var(--color-error,#d33)}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#085;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}@media screen{.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{color:#18911f}}@media screen and (prefers-color-scheme:dark){html.skin-theme-clientpref-os .mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{color:#18911f}}</style><cite id="CITEREFDriesenHölzle1992" class="citation cs2">Driesen; Hölzle (1992), <i>Accurate Indirect Branch Prediction</i></cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Accurate+Indirect+Branch+Prediction&rft.date=1992&rft.au=Driesen&rft.au=H%C3%B6lzle&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ABranch+target+predictor" class="Z3988"></span></li> <li><link rel="mw-deduplicated-inline-style" href="mw-data:TemplateStyles:r1238218222"><cite id="CITEREFErtlGregg2001" class="citation cs2">Ertl; Gregg (2001), <i>The Behavior of Efficient Virtual Machine Interpreters on Modern Architectures</i></cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=The+Behavior+of+Efficient+Virtual+Machine+Interpreters+on+Modern+Architectures&rft.date=2001&rft.au=Ertl&rft.au=Gregg&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ABranch+target+predictor" class="Z3988"></span></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Branch_target_predictor&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: External links"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><link rel="mw-deduplicated-inline-style" href="mw-data:TemplateStyles:r1238218222"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www-ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~tep/EE461/Notes/ILP/buffer.html">"Branch Target Buffers"</a>.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=Branch+Target+Buffers&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww-ee.eng.hawaii.edu%2F~tep%2FEE461%2FNotes%2FILP%2Fbuffer.html&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ABranch+target+predictor" class="Z3988"></span> (EE461)</li> <li><link rel="mw-deduplicated-inline-style" href="mw-data:TemplateStyles:r1238218222"><cite id="CITEREFFog" class="citation web cs1"><a href="/wiki/Agner_Fog" title="Agner Fog">Fog, Agner</a>. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf">"The microarchitecture of Intel, AMD and VIA CPUs"</a> <span class="cs1-format">(PDF)</span><span class="reference-accessdate">. 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data-event-name="history-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-history mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-history"></span> <span></span> </a> <a href="#" class="cdx-button cdx-button--fake-button cdx-button--fake-button--enabled cdx-button--weight-quiet cdx-button--icon-only mw-watchlink" id="ca-watchstar-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="watch-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-star mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-star"></span> <span></span> </a> <a href="#" class="cdx-button cdx-button--fake-button cdx-button--fake-button--enabled cdx-button--weight-quiet cdx-button--icon-only" id="ca-edit-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="wikitext-edit-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikiText mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-wikiText"></span> <span></span> </a> <a href="#" class="cdx-button cdx-button--fake-button cdx-button--fake-button--enabled cdx-button--weight-quiet cdx-button--icon-only" id="ca-ve-edit-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="ve-edit-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-edit mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-edit"></span> <span></span> </a> <a href="#" class="cdx-button cdx-button--fake-button cdx-button--fake-button--enabled cdx-button--weight-quiet cdx-button--icon-only" id="ca-viewsource-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="ve-edit-protected-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-editLock mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-editLock"></span> <span></span> </a> </div> <div class="vector-sticky-header-buttons"> <button class="cdx-button cdx-button--weight-quiet mw-interlanguage-selector" id="p-lang-btn-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="ui.dropdown-p-lang-btn-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-language mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-wikimedia-language"></span> <span>5 languages</span> </button> <a href="#" class="cdx-button cdx-button--fake-button cdx-button--fake-button--enabled cdx-button--weight-quiet cdx-button--action-progressive" id="ca-addsection-sticky-header" tabindex="-1" data-event-name="addsection-sticky-header"><span class="vector-icon mw-ui-icon-speechBubbleAdd-progressive mw-ui-icon-wikimedia-speechBubbleAdd-progressive"></span> <span>Add topic</span> </a> </div> <div class="vector-sticky-header-icon-end"> <div class="vector-user-links"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="vector-settings" id="p-dock-bottom"> <ul></ul> 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