ARM DDI 0301H
Copyright © 2004-2009 ARM Limited. All rights reserved.
5-1
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Chapter 5
Program Flow Prediction
This chapter describes how program flow prediction locates branches in the instruction stream and
the strategies used for determining if a branch is likely to be taken or not. It also describes the two
architecturally-defined SVC functions required for backwards-compatibility with earlier
architectures for flushing the
Prefetch Unit
(PU) buffers. It contains the following sections:
•
About program flow prediction
on page 5-2
•
Branch prediction
on page 5-4
•
Return stack
on page 5-7
•
Memory Barriers
on page 5-8
•
ARM1176JZF-S IMB implementation
on page 5-10.