Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Fetch ahead branch target buffer
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Application No.: US14935579Application Date: 2015-11-09
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Publication No.: US10664280B2Publication Date: 2020-05-26
- Inventor: Parthiv Pota , Sanjay Patel , Sudhakar Ranganathan
- Applicant: MIPS Tech, LLC
- Applicant Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Assignee: MIPS Tech, LLC
- Current Assignee: MIPS Tech, LLC
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Santa Clara
- Agency: Adams Intellex, PLC
- Main IPC: G06F9/30
- IPC: G06F9/30 ; G06F9/38 ; G06F12/0875

Abstract:
A fetch ahead branch target buffer is used by a branch predictor to determine a target address for a branch instruction based on a fetch pointer for a previous fetch bundle, i.e. a fetch bundle which is fetched prior to a fetch bundle which includes the branch instruction. An entry in the fetch ahead branch target buffer corresponds to one branch instruction and comprises a data portion identifying the target address of that branch instruction. In various examples, an entry also comprises a tag portion which stores data identifying the fetch pointer by which the entry is indexed. Branch prediction is performed by matching an index generated using a received fetch pointer to the tag portions to identify a matching entry and then determining the target address for the branch instruction from the data portion of the matching entry.
Public/Granted literature
- US20170132009A1 Fetch Ahead Branch Target Buffer Public/Granted day:2017-05-11
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