Patent ID: 8595474

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: a first branch history recording unit that stores only a single piece of first correspondence information that is correspondence information between an instruction address and a branch destination address of a most recent branch instruction, a computation of the most recent branch instruction having been completed and a branch for the most recent branch prediction having been taken; a second branch history recording unit that stores a second correspondence information which is correspondence information between an instruction address and a branch destination address of each of a plurality of past branch instructions, which include the most recent branch instruction, computations of the plurality of past branch instructions having been completed and branches for the plurality of past branch instructions having been taken; and a branch prediction control unit that makes a branch prediction, based on a result of a search for one of the first correspondence information stored in the first branch history recording unit and the second correspondence information stored in the second branch history recording unit, with use of an instruction address of an instruction fetched from a memory, and that stops supply of a clock to the second branch history recording unit and makes a branch prediction based on the result of the search for the first correspondence information in the first branch history recording unit when an instruction sequence enters a loop.