Advanced Computer Architecture, Imperial College 2001
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•There are many variations on the idea:
–gselect: many combinations of n and m
–global: use only the global history to index the BHT - ignore the PC of the branch being predicted (an extreme (n,m) gselect scheme)
–gshare: arrange bimodal predictors in single BHT, but construct its index by XORing low-order PC address bits with global branch history shift register - claimed to reduce conflicts
–Per-address Two-level Adaptive using Per-address pattern history (PAp): for each branch, keep a k-bit shift register recording its history, and use this to index a BHT for this branch (see Yeh and Patt, 1992)
•Each suits some programs well but not all
Variations