ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,468,536, issued on Nov. 11, was assigned to Arm Ltd. (Cambridge, Great Britain).
"Branch prediction" was invented by Rami Mohammad Al Sheikh (Morrisville, N.C.) and Houdhaifa Bouzguarrou (Austin, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus comprises storage circuitry to maintain a data-dependent branch prediction table comprising at least one data-dependent branch prediction entry. Each data-dependent branch prediction entry identifies a data-dependent branch instruction, a sequence start address identifying the start of a sequence of two or more memory addresses, and a sequence of observed branch outcomes for a sequence of instanc...