Intel Corporation

Jean-Luc Duprat

Andrew Thomas Forsyth

Paul Albert Lalonde

Renju Thomas

A processor includes an execution pipeline having one or more execution units to execute instructions and a branch prediction unit coupled to the execution units. The branch prediction unit includes a branch history table to store prior branch predictions, a branch predictor, in response to a conditional branch instruction, to predict a branch target address of the conditional branch instruction based on the branch history table, and address match logic to compare the predicted branch target address with an address of a next instruction executed immediately following the conditional branch instruction. The address match logic is to cause the execution pipeline to be flushed if the predicted branch target address does not match the address of the next instruction to be executed.

Dynamic branch hints using branches-to-nowhere conditional branch

A method and system may include a chip having graphics rendering hardware, a cache and a processor to execute an application with texture allocation logic to receive notification of a page miss from the graphics rendering hardware. The logic can map the page miss to a tile of a texture image, store the tile as an entry to the cache, and map the entry to a virtual address space of a virtual image corresponding to the texture image. The system may also include off-chip memory to store the texture image.

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Victoria, Canada

Jean-Luc Duprat