Branch target look up suppression

US11029959B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Arm Limited · GB

Inventors

• Yasuo Ishii · Austin, US
• Muhammad Umar Farooq · Austin, US
• Chris Abernathy · Austin, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Sep 4, 2018
• Grant date: Jun 8, 2021
• Expiry date: Jan 7, 2039

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F9/3806
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Branch prediction circuitry processes blocks of instructions and provides instruction fetch circuitry with indications of predicted next blocks of instructions to be retrieved from memory. Main branch target storage stores branch target predictions for branch instructions in the blocks of instructions. Secondary branch target storage caches the branch target predictions from the main branch target storage. Look-ups in the secondary branch target storage and the main branch target storage are performed in parallel. The main branch target storage is set-associative and an entry in the main branch target storage comprises multiple ways, wherein each way of the multiple ways stores a branch target prediction for one branch instruction. The branch prediction circuitry stores a way prediction for which of the multiple ways contain the branch target predictions for a predicted next block of instructions and stores a flag associated with the way prediction indicating whether all branch target predictions stored for the predicted next block of instructions in the main branch target storage are also stored in the secondary branch target storage. An active value of the flag suppresses the loo…