3 ms·
It's pretty clear from even a cursory look – the patent covers a second level of branch prediction, where the processor determines whether or not it should both
by matthewmacleod 11y ago
It's pretty clear from even a cursory look – the patent covers a second level of branch prediction, where the processor determines whether or not it should bother speculatively executing an instruction based on the previous outcome of that speculative execution.
Whether or not there was a prior implementation of this, I don't know – but it's also obviously more than a simple saturating counter branch predictor or whatever.
- sitkack 11y agohttp://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-11056 http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were-doing-... So inductive patent expansion. Take previous innovation, add 1, profit. What about L0 and L4 caches? Or Renaming sets of renamed registers? The problem as others have outlined, that patents are not concrete enough. Simply describing a problem is enough to be granted a patent. The value of the description of most patents is zero, which afaik this opposite of their intended effect as a record and transfer of technology.