Introduction

Predication is a technique to convert control flow to data flow in modern architectures, but had been used most heavily in VLIW and dataflow architectures. However, predication is no panacea. Current technologies have to adopt from one of the two undesirable options. First, they must avoid predication, which leaves every control decision as a branch and precludes distributing instructions over a large, distributed processor. The second alternative is to predicate instructions, but to centralize fetch and predicate prediction in a single unit, resulting in a low fetch bandwidth and, again, the preclusion of distribution over a large, distributed processor.

Benefits:

• Enables effective predicate prediction in a distributed uniprocessor environment
  
• Results in a speedup averaging 20% for only a small additional amount of state and complexity
  

Market Potential/Applications:

High-performance, low-power data processing systems

Contact:

University of Texas,
Austin, USA
Website : www.otc.utexas.edu