jump trace buffer


jump trace buffer

(JTB) A feature of some pipelined processors (e.g. Amulet,Pentium?) which stores the source and destination addressesof the last few branch instuctions executed. When a branchinstruction is fetched, its source is looked for in the JTB.If found, the next instuction fetch will be from the previousdestination of that branch. If it turns out that the branchshouldn't have been taken this time, then the pipeline isflushed. This means that in a tight loop it is notnecessary to flush the pipeline every time you jump back tothe start.