UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM presents "Using Neural Networks for Branch Prediction" speaker: Steve Hunt Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire 25 February 2004 (Wednesday) Lecture Theatre LC108 Hatfield College Lane Campus 3:00 - 4:00 pm Refreshments and biscuits will be available. Everyone is Welcome to Attend Abstract: --------- Modern computer architectures employ techniques such as pipelining to boost throughput. In principle, significant performance gains can be achieved by increasing pipeline depth; however, in practice there are penalties for adopting such a strategy. Where a program contains a conditional branch instruction (e.g. at the head of a 'for' loop), it is necessary to know whether or not the condition is satisfied in order to determine which instruction should be fetched next. The problem is that the necessary information is not available early enough in the fetch-execute cycle to ensure that the right instruction can be fetched in time to fill the next slot in the pipeline. If the slot is left empty then the processor 'loses' a clock cycle (because there is nothing for it to do), and every lost cycle leads to a reduction in throughput. One of the most common approaches to this problem is to attempt to _predict_ whether or not the branch will be taken. In his talk Steve will be examining the application of neural networks to the problem of dynamic branch prediction in high-performance processors. He will start off by explaining the branch prediction problem and why it is so important to find a good solution. He will then say a little about conventional solutions to the problem, before he goes on to explain how neural networks might be applied in this area. He will finish up by showing the results of some experiments he has been running on applying simple threshold logic units to the branch prediction problem, and by comparing such systems with more complex neural networks and with conventional predictors. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Computer Science Colloquium Abstracts On-line: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq/