Execution continues along the predicted line. This includes both conditional and unconditional branches. Although conditional branches have been predicted at this point, they may still be discarded due to an exception or a prior mispredicted branch. Starting with rev 3.x, this counter defined quite differently. It is incremented when a conditional branch is determined to have been correctly or incorrectly predicted.
Some branches depend on conditions in the floating-point unit.
Multiple floating-point branches can be resolved in a single cycle, but this counter can only be incremented by 1. As a result, if multiple FP conditional branches are verified in a single cycle, this count will be incorrect. This is a relatively rare event. The R10000 should predict a high percentage of branches correctly. The SGI compilers order branches based on heuristic evaluation of their likelihood of being taken.