speculative execution and superscalar are independent concepts. While superscalar does effectively mean multiple pipelines, you don't have to be superscalar for speculative execution. You can reduce pipeline stalls in a single pipeline by "speculating" right as well. The concept that GP is talking was a feature of of Itanium.
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The EPIC architecture also includes a grab-bag of architectural concepts to increase ILP:
Predicated execution is used to decrease the occurrence of branches and to increase the speculative execution of instructions. In this feature, branch conditions are converted to predicate registers which are used to kill results of executed instructions from the side of the branch which is not taken.
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Multi-way branch instructions improve branch prediction by combining many alternative branches into one bundle.
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Comments
speculative execution and superscalar are independent concepts. While superscalar does effectively mean multiple pipelines, you don't have to be superscalar for speculative execution. You can reduce pipeline stalls in a single pipeline by "speculating" right as well. The concept that GP is talking was a feature of of Itanium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instruction...
" The EPIC architecture also includes a grab-bag of architectural concepts to increase ILP:
Predicated execution is used to decrease the occurrence of branches and to increase the speculative execution of instructions. In this feature, branch conditions are converted to predicate registers which are used to kill results of executed instructions from the side of the branch which is not taken. . . . Multi-way branch instructions improve branch prediction by combining many alternative branches into one bundle. "