Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus comprising fetch circuitry. The fetch circuitry comprises a pointer-based fetch queue for queuing processing instructions retrieved from a storage, and pointer storage for storing a pointer identifying a current fetch queue element. The apparatus comprises decode circuitry having a plurality of decode units, and fetch queue extraction circuitry to, based on the pointer, extract the content of a plurality of elements of the fetch queue; apply combinatorial logic to speculatively produce, from the content of said fetch queue entries, a plurality of speculative potential instructions; and transmit each speculative potential instruction to a corresponding one of said decode units. Each decode unit is configured to decode the corresponding speculative potential instruction.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus comprising fetch circuitry. The fetch circuitry comprises a pointer-based fetch queue for queuing processing instructions retrieved from a storage, and pointer storage for storing a pointer identifying a current fetch queue element. The apparatus comprises decode circuitry having a plurality of decode units, and fetch queue extraction circuitry to, based on the pointer, extract the content of a plurality of elements of the fetch queue; apply combinatorial logic to speculatively produce, from the content of said fetch queue entries, a plurality of speculative potential instructions; and transmit each speculative potential instruction to a corresponding one of said decode units. Each decode unit is configured to decode the corresponding speculative potential instruction.

Abstract: An apparatus comprises instruction fetch circuitry to retrieve instructions from storage and branch target storage to store entries comprising source and target addresses for branch instructions. A confidence value is stored with each entry and when a current address matches a source address in an entry, and the confidence value exceeds a confidence threshold, instruction fetch circuitry retrieves a predicted next instruction from a target address in the entry. Branch confidence update circuitry increases the confidence value of the entry on receipt of a confirmation of the target address and decreases the confidence value on receipt of a non-confirmation of the target address. When the confidence value meets a confidence lock threshold below the confidence threshold and non-confirmation of the target address is received, a locking mechanism with respect to the entry is triggered. A corresponding method is also provided.

Abstract: An apparatus which produces branch predictions and a method of operating such an apparatus are provided. A branch target storage used to store entries comprising indications of branch instruction source addresses and indications of branch instruction target addresses is further used to store bias weights. A history storage stores history-based weights for the branch instruction source addresses and a history-based weight is dependent on whether a branch to a branch instruction target address from a branch instruction source address has previously been taken for at least one previous encounter with the branch instruction source address. Prediction generation circuitry receives the bias weight and the history-based weight of the branch instruction source address and generates either a taken prediction or a not-taken prediction for the branch. The reuse of the branch target storage to bias weights reduces the total storage required and the matching of entire source addresses avoids problems related to aliasing.

Abstract: An apparatus comprises instruction fetch circuitry to retrieve instructions from storage and branch target storage to store entries comprising source and target addresses for branch instructions. A confidence value is stored with each entry and when a current address matches a source address in an entry, and the confidence value exceeds a confidence threshold, instruction fetch circuitry retrieves a predicted next instruction from a target address in the entry. Branch confidence update circuitry increases the confidence value of the entry on receipt of a confirmation of the target address and decreases the confidence value on receipt of a non-confirmation of the target address. When the confidence value meets a confidence lock threshold below the confidence threshold and non-confirmation of the target address is received, a locking mechanism with respect to the entry is triggered. A corresponding method is also provided.