1. CPE 631: Branch Prediction Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Alabama in Huntsville Aleksandar Milenkovic, milenka@ece.uah.edu milenka@ece.uah.edu http://www.ece.uah.edu/~milenka

2.  AM LaCASALaCASA 2 The Case for Branch Prediction Dynamic scheduling increases the amount of ILP => control dependence becomes the limiting factor Multiple issue processors Branches will arrive up to N times faster in an n-issue processor Amdahl’s Law => relative impact of the control stalls will be larger with the lower potential CPI in an n-issue processor What have we done? Static schemes for dealing with branches – compiler optimizes the the branch behavior by scheduling it at compile time

3.  AM LaCASALaCASA 3 7 Branch Prediction Schemes 1-bit Branch-Prediction Buffer 2-bit Branch-Prediction Buffer Correlating Branch Prediction Buffer Tournament Branch Predictor Branch Target Buffer Integrated Instruction Fetch Units Return Address Predictors

4.  AM LaCASALaCASA 4 Basic Branch Prediction (1) Performance = ƒ(accuracy, cost of misprediction) Branch History Table: a small table of 1-bit values indexed by the lower bits of PC address Says whether or not branch taken last time Useful only to reduce branch delay when it is longer than the time to compute the possible target PC No address check – BHT has no address tags, so the prediction bit may have been put by another branch that has the same low-order bits Prediction is a hint, assumed to be correct – fetching begins in the predicted direction; if it turns out to be wrong, the prediction bit is inverted and stored back

5.  AM LaCASALaCASA 5 Basic Branch Prediction (2) Problem: in a loop, 1-bit BHT will cause 2 mispredictions (avg is 9 iterations before exit): End of loop case, when it exits instead of looping as before First time through loop on next time through code, when it predicts exit instead of looping Only 80% accuracy even if loop 90% of the time Ideally for highly regular branches, the accuracy of predictor = taken branch frequency Solution: use two-bit prediction schemes

6.  AM LaCASALaCASA 6 2-bit Scheme States in a two-bit prediction scheme Red: stop, not taken Green: go, taken Adds hysteresis to decision making process NT T T Predict Taken Predict Not Taken Predict Taken Predict Not Taken T NT T

7.  AM LaCASALaCASA 7 BHT Implementation 1) Small, special “cache” accessed with the instruction address during the IF pipe stage 2) Pair of bits attached to each block in the instruction cache and fetched with the instruction How many branches per instruction? Complexity? Instruction is decoded as branch, and branch is predicted as taken => fetch from the target as soon as the PC is known Note: Does this scheme help for simple MIPS?

8.  AM LaCASALaCASA 8 BHT Performance Prediction accuracy of 2-bit predictor with 4096 entries is ranging from over 99% to 82% or misprediction rate of 1% to 18% Real impact on performance: prediction accuracy + branch cost + branch frequency How to improve prediction accuracy? Increase the size of the buffer (number of entries) Increase the accuracy for each prediction (increase the number of bits) Both have limited impact!

9.  AM LaCASALaCASA 9 Case for Correlating Predictors Basic two-bit predictor schemes use recent behavior of a branch to predict its future behavior Improve the prediction accuracy look also at recent behavior of other branches if (aa == 2) aa = 0; if (bb == 2) bb = 0; if (aa != bb) { } subi R3, R1, #2 bnez R3, L1 ; b1 add R1, R0, R0 L1:subi R3, R2, #2 bnez R3, L2 ; b2 add R2, R0, R0 L2:sub R3, R1, R2 beqz R3, L3; b3 b3 is correlated with b1 and b2; If b1 and b2 are both untaken, then b3 will be taken. => Use correlating predictors or two-level predictors.

10.  AM LaCASALaCASA 10 An Example if (d == 0) d = 1; if (d == 1) {... } bnez R1, L1 ; b1 addi R1, R0, #1 L1:subi R3, R1, #1 bnez R3, L2 ; b2... L2:... Initial value of d d==0?b1Value of d before b2 d==1?b2 0YesNT1YesNT 1NoT1YesNT 2NoT2 T => if b1 is NT, then b2 is NT d=?b1 prediction b1 action New b1 prediction b2 predictionb2 action new b2 prediction 2NTTT TT 0T T 2 TT TT 0T T Behavior of one-bit Standard Predictor initialized to not taken; d alternates between 0 and 2. => All branches are mispredicted

11.  AM LaCASALaCASA 11 An Example Introduce one bit of correlation Each branch has two separate prediction bits: one prediction assuming the last branch executed was not taken, and another prediction assuming it was taken d=?b1 prediction b1 action New b1 prediction b2 predictionb2 action new b2 prediction 2NT/NTTT/NTNT/NTTNT/T 0T/NTNTT/NTNT/TNTNT/T 2T/NTT NT/TT 0T/NTNTT/NTNT/TNTNT/T => Only misprediction is on the first iteration Prediction bits Prediction if last branch NT Prediction if last branch T NT/NTNT NT/TNTT T/NTTNT T/TTT Behavior of one-bit predictor with one bit of correlation initialized to NT/NT; Assume last branch NT ?NT b1T b2T b1NT b2NT b1T b2T b1NT b2NT

12.  AM LaCASALaCASA 12 (1,1) Predictor (1, 1) predictor from the previous example Uses the behavior of the last branch to choose from among a pair of one-bit branch predictors (m, n) predictor Uses the behavior of the last m branches to choose from among 2 m predictors, each of which is a n-bit predictor for a single branch Global history of the most recent branches can be recorded in an m-bit shift register (each bit records whether a branch is taken or not)

13.  AM LaCASALaCASA 13 (2,2) Predictor 2-bit global history to choose from among 4 predictors for each branch address 2-bit local predictor Branch address (4 bits) 2-bits per branch local predictors Prediction 2-bit global branch history (01 = not taken then taken) (2, 2) predictor is implemented as a linear memory array that is 2 bits wide; the indexing is done by concatenating the global history bits and the number of required bits from the branch address.

14.  AM LaCASALaCASA 14 Fair Predictor Comparison Compare predictors that use the same number of state bits number of state bits for (m, n): 2 m *n*(number of prediction entries) number of state bits for (0, n): n*(number of prediction entries) Example: How many branch selected entries are in a (2,2) predictor that has a total of 8K state bits => 2 2 *2*(number of entries) = 8K => number of branch selected entries is 1K

15.  AM LaCASALaCASA 15 Accuracy of Different Schemes 4096 Entries 2-bit BHT Unlimited Entries 2-bit BHT 1024 Entries (2,2) BHT Frequency of Mispredictions

16.  AM LaCASALaCASA 16 Re-evaluating Correlation Several of the SPEC benchmarks have less than a dozen branches responsible for 90% of taken branches: program branch %static# = 90% compress14%23613 eqntott25%4945 gcc15%95312020 mpeg10%5598532 real gcc13%173613214 Real programs + OS more like gcc Small benefits beyond benchmarks for correlation? problems with branch aliases?

17.  AM LaCASALaCASA 17 Predicated Execution Avoid branch prediction by turning branches into conditionally executed instructions: if (x) then A = B op C else NOP If false, then neither store result nor cause exception Expanded ISA of Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC have conditional move; PA-RISC can annul any following instr. IA-64: 64 1-bit condition fields selected so conditional execution of any instruction This transformation is called “if-conversion” Drawbacks to conditional instructions Still takes a clock even if “annulled” Stall if condition evaluated late Complex conditions reduce effectiveness; condition becomes known late in pipeline x A = B op C

18.  AM LaCASALaCASA 18 Predicated Execution: An Example if (R1 > R2) { R3 = R1 + R2; R4 = R2 + 1; } else R3 = R1 – R2; SGT R5, R1, R2 BZ L1 ADD R3, R1, R2 ADDI R4, R2, #1 J After L1:SUB R3, R1, R2 After:... CMP R1, R2 ; set condition code ADD.GT R3, R1, R2 ADDI.GT R4, R2, #1 SUB.LE R3, R1, R2

19.  AM LaCASALaCASA 19 BHT Accuracy Mispredict because either: Wrong guess for that branch Got branch history of wrong branch when index the table 4096 entry table programs vary from 1% misprediction (nasa7, tomcatv) to 18% (eqntott), with spice at 9% and gcc at 12% For SPEC92, 4096 about as good as infinite table

20.  AM LaCASALaCASA 20 Tournament Predictors Motivation for correlating branch predictors is 2-bit predictor failed on important branches; by adding global information, performance improved Tournament predictors use several levels of branch prediction tables together with an algorithm for choosing among predictors Hopes to select right predictor for right branch

21.  AM LaCASALaCASA 21 Tournament Predictor in Alpha 21264 (1) 4K 2-bit counters to choose from among a global predictor and a local predictor 0/00/0 Use LsUse Gs Use L Use G 1/01/0 1/11/1 0/10/1 1/01/0 0/00/0 1/11/1 0/00/0 1/11/1 0/00/0 0/10/1 1/11/1 1/01/0 0/10/1 0/10/1 1/01/0 Legend: 0/0 – Prediction for L is incorrect, Prediction for G is incorrect

22.  AM LaCASALaCASA 22 Tournament Predictor in Alpha 21264 (2) Global predictor also has 4K entries and is indexed by the history of the last 12 branches; each entry in the global predictor is a standard 2-bit predictor 12-bit pattern: ith bit 0 => ith prior branch not taken; ith bit 1 => ith prior branch taken; Local predictor consists of a 2-level predictor: Top level a local history table consisting of 1024 10-bit entries; each 10-bit entry corresponds to the most recent 10 branch outcomes for the entry. 10-bit history allows patterns 10 branches to be discovered and predicted. Next level Selected entry from the local history table is used to index a table of 1K entries consisting a 3-bit saturating counters, which provide the local prediction Total size: 4K*2 + 4K*2 + 1K*10 + 1K*3 = 29K bits! (~180,000 transistors)

23.  AM LaCASALaCASA 23 % of predictions from local predictor in Tournament Prediction Scheme

24.  AM LaCASALaCASA 24 Accuracy of Branch Prediction

25.  AM LaCASALaCASA 25 Accuracy v. Size (SPEC89)

26.  AM LaCASALaCASA 26 Branch Target Buffers Prediction in DLX need to know from what address to fetch at the end of IF need to know whether the as-yet-undecoded instruction is branch, and if so, what the next PC should be Branch prediction cache that stores the predicted address for the next instruction after a branch is called a branch target buffer (BTB)

27.  AM LaCASALaCASA 27 BTB Branch PCPredicted PC =? PC of instruction FETCH Extra prediction state bits Yes: instruction is branch and use predicted PC as next PC No: branch not predicted, proceed normally (Next PC = PC+4) Keep only predicted-taken branches in BTB, since an untaken branch follows the same strategy as a nonbranch

28.  AM LaCASALaCASA 28 Special Case Return Addresses Register Indirect branch hard to predict address SPEC89 85% such branches for procedure return Since stack discipline for procedures, save return address in small buffer that acts like a stack: 8 to 16 entries has small miss rate

29.  AM LaCASALaCASA 29 Pitfall: Sometimes bigger and dumber is better 21264 uses tournament predictor (29 Kbits) Earlier 21164 uses a simple 2-bit predictor with 2K entries (or a total of 4 Kbits) SPEC95 benchmarks, 21264 outperforms 21264 avg. 11.5 mispredictions per 1000 instructions 21164 avg. 16.5 mispredictions per 1000 instructions Reversed for transaction processing (TP)! 21264 avg. 17 mispredictions per 1000 instructions 21164 avg. 15 mispredictions per 1000 instructions TP code much larger & 21164 hold 2X branch predictions based on local behavior (2K vs. 1K local predictor in the 21264)

30.  AM LaCASALaCASA 30 Dynamic Branch Prediction Summary Prediction becoming important part of scalar execution Branch History Table: 2 bits for loop accuracy Correlation: Recently executed branches correlated with next branch. Either different branches Or different executions of same branches Tournament Predictor: more resources to competitive solutions and pick between them Branch Target Buffer: include branch address & prediction Predicated Execution can reduce number of branches, number of mispredicted branches Return address stack for prediction of indirect jump

31. Advanced Topics

32.  AM LaCASALaCASA 32 Branch Instructions Branches may change the instruction control flow Type of branches Conditional or Unconditional Direct or Indirect Branch parameters Branch outcome (branch will be taken or not) Branch target address (if taken)

33.  AM LaCASALaCASA 33 Branch Prediction Deeper and wider pipelines An Example 10 pipeline stages where one instruction is at the each stage Upon decoding, branch target of the direct/unconditional branches known Penalty is 3 cycles – 3 pipeline stages flushed Upon execution, branch outcome/target of the indirect/conditional branches known Penalty is 7 cycles – 7 pipeline stages flushed If CPI IDEAL = 1 and 20% of all instructions are branches with 60% of them taken Consider only outcome penalty: CPI = 1+ (20% × 60% × 7) = 1.84 => Must predict the branch outcome and the target address in instruction fetch stage (before the instruction is decoded)

34.  AM LaCASALaCASA 34 Branch Target Prediction Instruction fetch address is used to recognize and predict a branch Use Branch Target Buffer A cache-like structure containing the branch target addresses Indexed by a part of the IP address Stores partial tag Indirect Branch Target Buffer A cache-like structure containing the indirect branch target addresses Indexed and tagged by a shift register containing the program path taken to reach the indirect branch

35.  AM LaCASALaCASA 35 Branch Outcome Prediction Branch Predictor Table (BPT) Indexed by a part of the IP address or by a register recording the program path taken to the branch 2-level (GShare) Combine branch history (kept in a BHR) with address bits Local predictors Better prediction for branches with strong local correlation (e.g., loop branches) More advanced branch predictors Tournament, Hybrid, Agree, Bi-mode, Yags, Gskewed, Loop Predictor

36.  AM LaCASALaCASA 36 Branch Outcome Prediction Branch Predictor Table (BPT) Indexed by a part of the IP address or by a register recording the program path taken to the branch 2-level (GShare) Combine branch history (kept in a BHR) with address bits Local predictors Better prediction for branches with strong local correlation (e.g., loop branches) More advanced branch predictors Tournament, Hybrid, Agree, Bi-mode, Yags, Gskewed, Loop Predictor

37.  AM LaCASALaCASA 37 Branch Predictor Design Space Goal: Achieve maximum accuracy, with minimal cost (complexity), latency, and power consumption

38.  AM LaCASALaCASA 38 Pentium M: Branch Predictor Unit 38