ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization· 2026Q2
JumpStart: Alleviating the Front-End Bottleneck in Modern x86 Processors
- 0citations
- Q2SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
JumpStart is a novel mechanism that synergistically uses Fetch-Directed Instruction Prefetching (FDIP) hints to detect micro-op cache misses early, waking up the decode pipeline sooner and alleviating a key front-end bottleneck in modern x86 processors.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Modern x86 processors face a front-end bottleneck due to insufficient fetch throughput for sequential code.
- Existing optimizations like FDIP and μ op cache target the same code regions, leading to redundancy.
- JumpStart leverages FDIP hints to predict μ op cache misses and pre-emptively activate the decode pipeline.
- This synergistic approach alleviates the front-end bottleneck by improving fetch throughput.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
With the stagnation of single-threaded performance, the need for optimizations targeting sequential code performance is greater than ever before. Modern workloads have also been growing in code footprint, exposing a bottleneck in the processor front-end, specifically its inability to maintain a sufficiently high fetch throughput to saturate available execution units. To address them, two optimizations exist in modern processors: (1) Fetch-Directed Instruction Prefetching (FDIP) and (2) the micro-op cache ( μ op cache), both of which improve fetch throughput leading to improved overall performance. However, since they target the same code regions, in the presence of FDIP, the μ op cache becomes mostly redundant as a performance optimization. This work proposes JumpStart : a novel and lightweight mechanism that synergistically exploits hints from FDIP to early-detect a μ op cache miss and wake up the decode pipeline ahead of time, alleviating a key front-end bottleneck.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization, 2026 · DOI ↗
Continue with a free account
Ask the paper: 3 free questions a day about this paper; save it, get its citation, new summaries every day for your field. Takeaways are Premium.
Continue free on the webSign in with Google or Apple; no card needed. You come back to this paper.
On your phone:
Field: Hardware and Architecture
Hardware and ArchitectureComputer Science