Predicting through jump tables is no small part of the purpose of indirect branch prediction. This impacts two critical abilities here: 1. Good local decisions

Predicting through jump tables is no small part of the purpose of indirect branch prediction. This impacts two critical abilities here: 1. Good local decisions from the compiler optimizer; 2. Good execution by superscalar microarchitectures. This discussion runs the risk of being as dated as advice to write macros rather than functions due to insufficiently aggressive inclining. However, as it stands today anecdotally, I've never seen compiler optimization inline through a indirect call in a jump table, and I have seen numerous examples of inlining through switch. I've also seen switch compile down to computed goto. Santana in his analysis of Indirect Branch Speculation indicates that the execution of these branches is less refined relative to direct branches. Switch statements are a pretty good default.