Name
Title | ||
|---|---|---|
Improving prediction for procedure returns with return-address-stack repair mechanisms |
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
This paper evaluates several mechanisms for repair- ing the return-address stack after branch mispredictions. The return-address stack is a small but important structure for achieving better control-flow prediction accuracy and therefore better performance. But wrong-path execution after mispredictions frequently corrupts the return-address stack, making repair mechanisms necessary. If the proces- sor implements multipath execution—simultaneously exe- cuting both sides of a branch—the contention among dif- ferent paths makes the problem more severe. For conventional, single-path processors, this paper pro- poses saving both the top-of-stack pointer and the top-of- stack contents for later restoration in case of a mispre- diction. This simple technique achieves nearly 100% hit rates and improves performance by up to 8.7% compared to a stack with no repair mechanism. For multipath proces- sors, providing each path with its own return-address stack completely eliminates contention, improving performance by over 25%. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
1998 | 10.1109/MICRO.1998.742787 | Dallas, TX |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
computer architecture,performance evaluation,branch mispredictions,procedure returns prediction,return-address stack,return-address-stack repair mechanisms,top-of-stack contents,top-of-stack pointer | Multipath propagation,Pointer (computer programming),Computer science,Parallel computing,Stack register,Stack trace,Real-time computing,Return address stack,Stack-based memory allocation | Conference |
ISSN | ISBN | Citations |
1072-4451 | 0-8186-8609-X | 38 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
6.40 | 20 | 4 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Skadron | 1 | 6188 | 384.18 |
| Pritpal S. Ahuja | 2 | 144 | 17.85 |
| Margaret Martonosi | 3 | 8647 | 715.76 |
| Douglas W. Clark | 4 | 1009 | 266.88 |