Speculative execution exception recovery using write-back suppression

Compiler-controlled speculative execution has been shown to be e ective in increasing the availableinstruction level parallelismILP found in non-numeric programs. An importantproblemwith compiler-controlledspeculative execution is to accurately report and handle exceptions caused by speculatively executed instructions. Previous solutions to this problem incur either excessive hardware overhead or extra register pressure. This paper introduces a new architecture scheme referred to as write-back suppression. This scheme systematically suppresses register le updates for subsequent speculative instructions after an exception condition is detected for a speculatively executed instruction. We show that with a modest amount of hardware, writeback suppression supports accurate reporting and handling of exceptions for compiler-controlled speculative execution without adding to the register pressure. Experiments based on a prototype compiler implementation and hardware simulation indicate tha...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Roger A. Bringmann, Scott A. Mahlke, Richard E. Hank, John C. Gyllenhaal, Wen-mei W. Hwu
• Keywords: Compiler-controlled Speculative Execution, Hardware, MICRO 1993, Register Pressure, Write-back Suppression