What phenomenon occurs when software instructions cause the CPU to fetch and execute instructions across a conditional branch that turns out to be wrong, requiring the pipeline to be emptied?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: C. Pipeline flush
- Step 1: Modern processors use branch predictors to guess whether a conditional jump (if-else, loop) will be taken so the pipeline can fetch upcoming instructions speculatively.
- Step 2: When a branch is mispredicted, all speculatively fetched instructions in flight are invalid; the CPU must execute a pipeline flush, discarding partial work and restarting fetch at the correct address.
Answer
Pipeline flush
Why not the others: 'Cache thrashing' Cache thrashing occurs when multiple memory addresses repeatedly overwrite one another in a cache due to poor spatial or temporal locality; 'Stack overflow' A stack overflow occurs when a program exhausts its allocated call stack space, typically caused by infinite recursion; 'Memory leak' A memory leak occurs when an application fails to release dynamically allocated heap memory after it is no longer needed.
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