The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 01, 2016
Filed:
Dec. 31, 2013
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Tejas Karkhanis, White Plains, NY (US);
David S. Levitan, Austin, TX (US);
Jose E. Moreira, Irvington, NY (US);
Mauricio J. Serrano, Bronx, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Provided herein is a compressed cache design to predict indirect branches in a microprocessor based on the characteristics of the addresses of the branch instructions. In one aspect, a method for predicting a branch target T in a microprocessor includes the following steps. A compressed count cache table (CTABLE) of branch targets indexed using a function combining a branch address and a branch history vector for each of the targets is maintained, wherein entries in the CTABLE contain only low-order bits of each of the targets in combination with an index bit(s) I. A given one of the entries is obtained related to a given one of the branch targets and it is determined from the index bits I whether A) high-order bits of the target are equal to the branch address, or B) the high-order bits of the target are contained in an auxiliary cache table (HTABLE).