Branch delays in a deeper pipeline

Consider the MIPS R4000 pipeline structure:

• IF: first half of fetching of instrⁿ; PC selection happens here as well as initiation of I-cache access
• IS: second half of I-cache access
• RF: instruction decode and register fetch
• EX: ALU operation - arithmetic, effective address calculation, branch target computation, condition evaluation
• DF: data fetch; first half of D-cache access
• DS: second half of D-cache access hit
• TC: tag check; determine whether the D-cache access was a hit
• WB: write back for loads and register-register operations