Predication
Removal of conditional branches via the conditional execution (or completion) of instructions based on the result of a Boolean condition.
- Has its roots in vector machines like CRAY-1 (vector mask)
- Most often “restricted” predication limited to conditional moves as, e.g., in the Alpha
- Possibility of nullifying next instruction as in PA-RISC
- More generally, use of the guarded execution model with a special instruction controlling the conditional execution of several of the subsequent instructions
- Unrestricted: allow every instruction to be conditional (VLIW Cydra 5)