Alternative implementations of two-level adaptive branch prediction
ISCA '92 Proceedings of the 19th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
The effect of speculatively updating branch history on branch prediction accuracy, revisited
MICRO 27 Proceedings of the 27th annual international symposium on Microarchitecture
A comparative analysis of schemes for correlated branch prediction
ISCA '95 Proceedings of the 22nd annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Correlation and aliasing in dynamic branch predictors
ISCA '96 Proceedings of the 23rd annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Assigning confidence to conditional branch predictions
Proceedings of the 29th annual ACM/IEEE international symposium on Microarchitecture
The agree predictor: a mechanism for reducing negative branch history interference
Proceedings of the 24th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Trading conflict and capacity aliasing in conditional branch predictors
Proceedings of the 24th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
MICRO 30 Proceedings of the 30th annual ACM/IEEE international symposium on Microarchitecture
Confidence estimation for speculation control
Proceedings of the 25th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Pipeline gating: speculation control for energy reduction
Proceedings of the 25th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Dynamic history-length fitting: a third level of adaptivity for branch prediction
Proceedings of the 25th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
Selective eager execution on the PolyPath architecture
Proceedings of the 25th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
A study of branch prediction strategies
ISCA '81 Proceedings of the 8th annual symposium on Computer Architecture
Branch Prediction Using Selective Branch Inversion
PACT '99 Proceedings of the 1999 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques
The Alpha 21264 Microprocessor Architecture
ICCD '98 Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Design
Alloyed branch history: combining global and local branch history for robust performance
International Journal of Parallel Programming
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This paper describes a family of branch predictors that use confidence estimation to improve the performance of an underlying branch predictor. This method, referred to as Selective Branch Inversion (SBI), uses a confidence estimator to determine when the branch direction prediction is likely to be incorrect; branch decisions for these low-confidence branches are inverted. SBI with an underlying Gshare branch predictor outperforms other equal sized predictors such as the best history length Gshare predictor, as well as equally complex McFarling and Bi-Mode predictors. Our analysis shows that SBI achieves its performance through conflict detection and correction, rather than through conflict avoidance as some of the previously proposed predictors such as Bi-Mode and Agree. We also show that SBI is applicable to other underlying predictors, such as the McFarling Combined predictor. Finally we show that Dynamic Inversion Monitoring (DIM) can be used as a safeguard to turn off SBI in cases where it degrades the overall performance.