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by gpderetta 90 days ago
Typical branch predictors can both learns patterns (even very long patterns) and use branch history (the probability of a branch being taken depends on the path taken to reach that branch). They don't normally look at data other than branch addresses (and targets for indirect branches).
1 comments

They can't. The data that would be needed isn't available at the time the prediction is made.
Yeah, otherwise you wouldn't need to predict anything.