4.4 - Branch Misprediction and Penalty
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Practice Questions
Test your understanding with targeted questions
What is a branch misprediction?
💡 Hint: Think about the flow of control in a program.
What happens during a pipeline flush?
💡 Hint: Consider what the processor must do when it realizes a mistake.
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Interactive Quizzes
Quick quizzes to reinforce your learning
What commonly occurs after a branch misprediction?
💡 Hint: Think about what happens to wrong instructions in the pipeline.
True or False: Branch mispredictions have minimal impact on processor performance.
💡 Hint: Consider how mispredictions affect the execution flow.
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Challenge Problems
Push your limits with advanced challenges
Draw a diagram of a pipelined processor with indications for where mispredictions might occur and what a pipeline flush would look like.
💡 Hint: Focus on how instructions move through various stages and where they might go awry.
Describe a practical application where branch prediction techniques can be applied to improve performance. What specific strategies would be employed?
💡 Hint: Think of areas in computing where many branches may occur in a decision-making process.
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