Dual-Stack Return Address Predictor

摘要：

The target address misprediction of procedure returns is one important source of branch mispredictions. Return address predictors used currently almost have the same architecture: a single return address stack and a top-of-stack pointer, some of which may be enhanced by repair mechanisms. The disadvantage of this type of return address predictor is either prediction accuracy is low or the cost is high. In this paper, we present a new kind of return address prediction structure called Dual-Stack Return Address Predictor (DSRAP)which contains two return address stacks: RAS_PRED and RAS_WRB. Just as the return address stack in current return address predictors does, RAS_PRED provides predicted target addresses for procedure returns. When a branch misprediction is detected, RAS_WRB provides data for repairing RAS_PRED.Compared to return address predictors used currently, DSRAP can achieve higher prediction accuracy when consuming the same hardware resources.DSRAP can acquire 100％ hit rates if mispredictions caused by the stack overflow or unmatched call/return sequences are ignored.

作者: Caixia Sun Minxuan Zhang

作者单位: College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology,Changsha 410073, Hunan, P.R.China

会议类型: 国际会议

会议名称: 首届嵌入式软件与系统国际会议(Proceedings of the First International Conference on Embedded Software and System)

会议地点: 杭州

会议语种:英文

页码: 95-102

在线出版日期: 2004-12-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）