• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.366-370
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• 2015

This paper proposes a method for improving a branch predictor for the extendable instruction set computer (EISC) processor. The original EISC branch predictor has several shortcomings: a small branch target buffer, absence of a global history, a one-bit local branch history, and unsupported prediction of branches following LERI, which is a special instruction to extend an immediate value. We adopt a G-share branch predictor and eliminate the existing shortcomings. We verified the new branch predictor on a field-programmable gate array with the Dhrystone benchmark. The newly proposed EISC branch predictor also accomplishes higher branch prediction accuracy than a conventional branch predictor.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.621-626
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• 2009

This paper presents a multiple branch predictor using perceptrons. The key idea is to apply neural networks to the multiple branch predictor. We describe our design and evaluate it with the SPEC 2000 integer benchmarks. Our predictor achieves increased accuracy than the Bi-Mode and the YAGS multiple branch predictor with the same hardware cost.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38A no.12
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• pp.1094-1101
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• 2013

This paper proposes an improved branch predictor that reduces the number execution cycles of applications by selectively accessing a specific element in 4-way associative cache. When a branch instruction is fetched, the proposed branch predictor acquires a branch target address from the selected element in the cache by referring to MRU buffer. Branch prediction rate and application execution speed are considerably improved by increasing the number of BTAC entries in restricted power condition, when compared with that of previous branch predictor which accesses all elements. The effectiveness of the proposed dynamic branch predictor is verified by executing benchmark applications on the core simulator. Experimental results show that number of execution cycles decreases by an average of 10.1%, while power consumption increases an average of 7.4%, when compared to that of a core without a dynamic branch predictor. Execution cycles are reduced by 4.1% in comparison with a core which employs previous dynamic branch predictor.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.12
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• pp.1704-1709
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• 2014

In order to increase the performance of multi-core system processor architectures, the multi-thread branch predictor which speculatively fetches and allocates threads to each core should be highly accurate. In this paper, the perceptron based multi-thread branch predictor is proposed for the multi-core processor architectures. Using SPEC 2000 benchmarks as input, the trace-driven simulation has been performed for the 2 to 16-core architectures employing perceptron multi-thread branch predictor extensively. Its performance is compared with the architecture which utilizes the two-level adaptive multi-thread branch predictor.

• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.43-60
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• 2009

To improve the performance of wide-issue superscalar processors, it is essential to increase the width of instruction fetch and the issue rate. Removal of control hazard has been put forward as a significant new source of instruction-level parallelism for superscalar processors and the conditional branch prediction is an important technique for improving processor performance. Branch mispredictions, however, waste a large number of cycles, inhibit out-of-order execution, and waste electric power on mis-speculated instructions. Hence, the branch predictor with higher accuracy is necessary for good processor performance. In global-history-based predictors like gshare and GAg, many mispredictions come from commit update of the branch history. Some works on this subject have discussed the need for speculative update of the history and recovery mechanisms for branch mispredictions. In this paper, we present a new mechanism for recovering the branch history after a misprediction. The proposed mechanism adds an age_counter to the original predictor and doubles the size of the branch history register. The age_counter counts the number of outstanding branches and uses it to recover the branch history register. Simulation results on the SimpleScalar 3.0/PISA tool set and the SPECINT95 benchmarks show that gshare and GAg with the proposed recovery mechanism improved the average prediction accuracy by 2.14% and 9.21%, respectively and the average IPC by 8.75% and 18.08%, respectively over the original predictor.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.19A no.2
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• pp.77-84
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• 2012

Speculative execution for improving instruction-level parallelism is widely used in high-performance processors. In the speculative execution technique, the most important factor is the accuracy of branch predictor. Unfortunately, complex branch predictors for improving the accuracy can cause serious thermal problems in 3D multicore processors. Thermal problems have negative impact on the processor performance. This paper analyzes two methods to solve the thermal problems in the branch predictor of 3D multi-core processors. First method is dynamic thermal management which turns off the execution of the branch predictor when the temperature of the branch predictor exceeds the threshold. Second method is thermal-aware branch predictor placement policy by considering each layer's temperature in 3D multi-core processors. According to our evaluation, the branch predictor placement policy shows that average temperature is $87.69^{\circ}C$, and average maximum temperature gradient is $11.17^{\circ}C$. And, dynamic thermal management shows that average temperature is $89.64^{\circ}C$ and average maximum temperature gradient is $17.62^{\circ}C$. Proposed branch predictor placement policy has superior thermal efficiency than the dynamic thermal management. In the perspective of performance, the proposed branch predictor placement policy degrades the performance by 3.61%, while the dynamic thermal management degrades the performance by 27.66%.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-28
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• 1999

Recently studies have shown that conditional branches can be accurately predicted by recording the path leading up to the branch. But path predictors are more complex and uncompatible with existing pattern branch predictors. In order to solve these problems, we propose a simple path branch predictor(SPBP) that hashes together two most recent branch instruction addresses. In addition, we propose a pattern/path hybrid branch predictor composed of the SPBP and existing pattern branch predictors. Through the trace-driven simulation of six benchmark programs, the performance improvement by the proposed pattern/path hybrid branch prediction is analysed and validated. The proposed predictor can improve the prediction accuracy from 94.21% to 95.03%.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.1158-1165
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• 1999

조건부 분기 명령어(conditional branch instruction)의 잘못된 분기 예측(branch misprediction)은 프로세서의 성능 향상에 심각한 장애 요인이 되고 있다. 특히 시분할(time-sharing) 시스템과 같이 문맥 교환(context switch)이 발생하는 멀티프로그래밍 환경(multiprogramming environment)에서는 더욱 낮은 분기 예측 정확성(branch prediction accuracy)을 보인다. 본 논문에서는 문맥 교환이 발생하는 멀티프로그래밍 환경에서 높은 분기 예측 정확성을 보이는 중첩 분기 예측표 교환(Overlapped Predictor Table Switch, OPTS) 기법을 소개한다. 분기 예측표(predictor table)를 분할하여 각각의 프로세스(process)에 할당하는 OPTS 기법은 문맥 교환의 영향을 최소화함으로써 높은 분기 예측 정확성을 유지하는 분기 예측 방법이다.Abstract There is wide agreement that one of the most important impediments to the performance of current and future pipelined superscalar processors is the presence of conditional branches in the instruction stream. Accurate branch prediction is required to overcome this performance limitation. Many branch predictors have been proposed to help to alleviate this problem, including the two-level adaptive branch predictor, and more recently, hybrid branch predictor. In a less idealized environment, such as a time-sharing system, code of interest involves context switches. Context switches, even at fairly large intervals, can seriously degrade the performance of many of the most accurate branch prediction schemes. In this study, we measure the effect of context switch on the branch prediction accuracy in various situation and show the feasibility of our new mechanism, OPTS(Overlapped Predictor Table Switch), which save and restore branch history table at every context switch.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.803-804
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• 2006

This paper presents a multiple branch predictor with perceptrons. We describe our design and evaluate it with the SPEC 2000 benchmarks. Our predictor achieves increased accuracy than the previous multiple branch predictors.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.14A no.6
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• pp.347-356
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• 2007

In designing a branch predictor, in addition to accuracy, microarchitects should consider power consumption, especially for embedded processors. This paper proposes a power-aware branch predictor, which is based on the gshare predictor, by accessing the BTB (Branch Target Buffer) only when the prediction from the PHT (Pattern History Table) is taken. To enable the selective access to the BTB, the PHT in the proposed branch predictor is accessed one cycle earlier than the traditional PHT to prevent the additional delay. As a side effect, two predictions from the PHT are obtained through one access to the PHT, which leads to more power savings. The proposed branch predictor reduces the power consumption, not requiring any additional storage arrays, not incurring additional delay (except just one MUX delay) and never harming accuracy. Simulation results show that the proposed predictor reduces the power consumption by $35{\sim}48%$ compared to the traditional predictor.