Yes. However, this is part of the reason why you always try to avoid performing if/then in critical loops. Obviously the index counter cannot be hoisted, but i

Yes. However, this is part of the reason why you always try to avoid performing if/then in critical loops. Obviously the index counter cannot be hoisted, but if you are doing 1000 iterations, 2-bit Yeh prediction (which was common at the time) can be amortized. Later CPU architectures speculatively executed and then re-executed instructions that were incorrect due to branching, and VLIW allowed you to "shut off" instructions in a loop rather than have to predict.