Improving Context-Based Load Value Prediction
Martin Burtscher · 2000
Microprocessors are becoming faster at such a rapid pace that other components like random access memory cannot keep up. As a result, the latency of load instructions grows constantly and already often impedes processor performance. Fortunately, load instructions frequently fetch predictable sequences of values. Load value predictors exploit this behavior to predict the results of load instructions. Because the predicted values are available before the memory can deliver the true load values, the CPU is able to speculatively continue processing without having to wait for memory accesses to complete, which improves the execution speed. The contributions of this dissertation to the area of load value prediction include a novel technique to decrease the number of mispredictions, a predictor design that increases the hardware utilization and thus the number of correctly predicted load values, a detailed analysis of hybrid predictor combinations to determine components that complement eac...