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Delay slots

A project log for PDP - Processor Design Principles

Distilling my experience and wisdom about the architecture, organisation and design choices of my CPUs

yann-guidon-ygdesYann Guidon / YGDES 02/22/2018 at 05:480 Comments

Delay slots, or delayed jumps, are one of these neat tricks you can use for a fixed architecture, and it becomes a nightmare when the architecture changes. That's why it helped MIPS processors take off, but the ALPHA avoided it (which was wise).

So yes, it's a pretty cool trick when you have a canonical RISC pipeline with single-issue. Otherwise, stay away.

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