4 - Branches and Limits to Pipelining
Enroll to start learning
You’ve not yet enrolled in this course. Please enroll for free to listen to audio lessons, classroom podcasts and take practice test.
Practice Questions
Test your understanding with targeted questions
What are branch instructions?
💡 Hint: Think about conditional statements in programming.
Define control hazard.
💡 Hint: Consider what happens when you cannot determine the flow of execution.
4 more questions available
Interactive Quizzes
Quick quizzes to reinforce your learning
What is a control hazard?
💡 Hint: Think about situations where instruction flow is paused.
True or False: Static branch prediction adapts based on prior outcomes.
💡 Hint: Consider whether the prediction changes over time or stays fixed.
1 more question available
Challenge Problems
Push your limits with advanced challenges
Design a simple algorithm that minimizes branch mispredictions using historical data. Outline how you would implement this in a hypothetical processor.
💡 Hint: What would help in recognizing trends in branch behavior?
Evaluate the impact of increased pipeline depth on branch latency and overall processor performance. Consider how different hazard types contribute to this impact.
💡 Hint: What challenges arise from more complex pipelining?
Get performance evaluation
Reference links
Supplementary resources to enhance your learning experience.