Register renaming doesn't mean changing the name of registers you already have (which isn't really possible), it just adds new "virtual"/concurrent registers th

Register renaming doesn't mean changing the name of registers you already have (which isn't really possible), it just adds new "virtual"/concurrent registers that conserve the semantics of operations. So what you say doesn't sound right to me: register renaming is actually a way of (re)labelling the results of small ALU jobs to be distributed for concurrent execution. It's not in any way about switching references around on live data as you suggest. Not 100% sure about this but the flavour of what I've read doesn't involve that kind of fancy footwork.