CS 752 Project Report Software-based and Hardware- based Branch Prediction Strategies and Performance Evaluation Software-based and Hardware-based Branch Prediction Strategies and Performance Evaluation Abstract

In a highly parallel computer system, performance losses due to conditional branch instructions can be minimized by branch prediction to fetch and issue subsequent instructions before the actual branch outcome is known. This paper discusses several software-based static and hardware-based dynamic branch prediction strategies and uses the modified release 3.0 of the SimpleScalar simulation tool set to evaluate their performance. According to our test result, the hardware-based dynamic branch prediction strategies always achieve high prediction accuracy than the software-based static branch prediction strategies. 1