A Time-predictable Branch Predictor

Long pipelines need good branch predictors to keep the pipeline running. Current branch predictors are optimized for the average case, which might not be a good fit for real-time systems and worst-case execution time analysis. This paper presents a time-predictable branch predictor co-designed with the associated worst-case execution time analysis. The branch predictor uses a fully-associative cache to track branch outcomes and destination addresses. The fully-associative cache avoids any false sharing of entries between branches. Therefore, we can analyze program scopes that contain a number of branches lower than or equal to the number of branches in the prediction table. Experimental results show that the worst-case execution time bounds of programs using the proposed predictor are lower than using static branch predictors at a moderate hardware cost.