5-2 March, 2003 Developers Manual
Intel® 80200 Processor based on Intel® XScale Microarchitecture

Branch Target Buffer

5.1.1 Reset
After Processor Reset, the BTB is disabled and all entries are invalidated.
5.1.2 Update Policy
A new entry is stored into the BTB when the following conditions are met:
the branch instruction has executed,
the branch was taken
the branch is not currently in the BTB
The entry is then marked valid and the history bits are set to WT. If another valid branch exists at
the same entry in the BTB, it is evicted by the new branch.
Once a branch is stored in the BTB, the history bits are updated upon every execution of the branch
as shown in Figure5-2.
Figure 5-2. Branch History
SN WN WT ST
Take n
Not Take
n
Take n
Take n
Not Taken
Not Taken
Not Taken
Take n
SN: Strongly Not Taken
WN: Weakly Not Taken
ST: Strongly Taken
WT: Weakly Taken