Advantages
The main purpose of predication is to avoid jumps over very small sections of program code, increasing the effectiveness of pipelined execution and avoiding problems with the cache. It also has a number of more subtle benefits:
- Functions that are traditionally computed using simple arithmetic and bitwise operations may be quicker to compute using predicated instructions.
- Predicated instructions with different predicates can be mixed with each other and with unconditional code, allowing better instruction scheduling and so even better performance.
- Elimination of unnecessary branch instructions can make the execution of necessary branches, such as those that make up loops, faster by lessening the load on branch prediction mechanisms.
Read more about this topic: Branch Predication
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel.... Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy Spirit.”
—Maria Stewart (1803–1879)