Branch Target Buffer Energy Reduction Through Efficient Multiway Branch Translation Techniques

Branch Target Buffer (BTB) plays an important role for pipelined processors in branch prediction during the execution of loops, if-then-else, call-return, and multiway branch statements. It has been observed that 20% of instructions in a program are related to branch. Access to BTB consumes 10% of total energy consumption of a program in execution. The present work introduces the use of K–d tree and pattern matcher to generate efficient code, i.e., lesser execution time, for multiway branch. However, instead of enhancing performance, Voltage Frequency Scaling (VFS) can be applied to achieve energy efficiency without degradation in performance. The present work is evaluated on a wide range benchmark programs. The BTB energy saving in the present work lies in the range 20% to 80% with small improvement performance as well. The total energy reduction is in the range 3–12%.