Question

Interference in this action can be reduced with strategies like “YAGS”, “Bi-mode”, and “gskew”. The Alpha 21264 uses a “tournament” technique for this action that dynamically picks a local or global strategy. A simple strategy for this action that uses no state is abbreviated “BTFNT”, where B stands for “backwards” (15[1])and F is “forwards”. The top-voted answer of all time on StackOverflow explains this technique (-5[1])in response to the question (15[1])“Why is processing a sorted array faster than processing an unsorted array?”. A textbook technique for this action uses two-bit saturating counters to keep track of (*) history in a pattern history table. Failure in this action may lead to wasted speculative execution, which (10[1])is the basis of the Spectre vulnerability. For 10 points, what technique improves how a processor’s instruction pipeline handles conditional jumps by guessing whether they’ll be taken? ■END■ (0[1])

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