12th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT'03) Y-Branches: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It New Orleans, Louisiana September 27-October 01 ISBN: 0-7695-2021-9
In this paper, we study the effects of manipulating the architected direction of conditional branches. Through the use of statistical sampling, we .nd that about 40% of all dynamic branches and about 50% of mispredicted branches do not affect correct program behavior when forced down the incorrect path. We call such branches Y-branches. To further examine this unexpected phenomenon, we provide a characterization of the coding constructs that give rise to such branches. Examples of such coding constructs include short-circuits and ineffectual loop iterations. We provide a statistical breakdown of the frequency of these branches and their constructs. Finally, we suggest some techniques for exploiting this behavior, particularly when it results from short-circuit constructs.
Citation:
Nicholas Wang, Michael Fertig, Sanjay Patel, "Y-Branches: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It," pact, pp.56, 12th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT'03), 2003 Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||