Patent ID: 9009449
Filing Date: 2015-04-14
Classification: G06F,Y02D

Abstract:
1. A method for executing program instructions on a processor, comprising: issuing instructions for execution during a normal-execution mode; upon encountering a triggering instruction which causes an unresolved data dependency, speculatively executing subsequent instructions in a lookahead mode to prefetch future load; and when the processor determines that the lookahead mode is unlikely to uncover an additional outer-level cache miss, terminating the lookahead mode and recommencing execution at the triggering instruction in the normal-execution mode after the unresolved data dependency is resolved, wherein the processor determines that the lookahead mode is unlikely to uncover an additional outer-level cache miss based on at least one of: wherein the N branches were unresolvable because of data dependency problems and were predicted by a branch predictor with low confidence.