Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Multiple-table branch target buffer
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Application No.: US16030031Application Date: 2018-07-09
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Publication No.: US10713054B2Publication Date: 2020-07-14
- Inventor: Thomas Cloqueur , Anthony Jarvis
- Applicant: ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC.
- Applicant Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Assignee: ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC.
- Current Assignee: ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC.
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Main IPC: G06F9/30
- IPC: G06F9/30 ; G06F9/38

Abstract:
A processor includes two or more branch target buffer (BTB) tables for branch prediction, each BTB table storing entries of a different target size or width or storing entries of a different branch type. Each BTB entry includes at least a tag and a target address. For certain branch types that only require a few target address bits, the respective BTB tables are narrower thereby allowing for more BTB entries in the processor separated into respective BTB tables by branch instruction type. An increased number of available BTB entries are stored in a same or a less space in the processor thereby increasing a speed of instruction processing. BTB tables can be defined that do not store any target address and rely on a decode unit to provide it. High value BTB entries have dedicated storage and are therefore less likely to be evicted than low value BTB entries.
Public/Granted literature
- US20200012497A1 MULTIPLE-TABLE BRANCH TARGET BUFFER Public/Granted day:2020-01-09
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