Hi,

Can anyone please give me clear instruction on disabling Branch Predictor in Linux kernel for i386 arch. and how to compile the kernel after disabling the Branch Predictor.

Thanks,
Aravind

Branch prediction is a function of the cpu, not part of the linux kernel - it's not a user configurable option.

So can you by any chance tell me how can i disable it in CPU ... I wanted to run SPEC benchmarks by disabling Branch Prediction.

(I am not Sure, but according to what i heard was that, there will be a flag in linux kernel where we can disable Branch Prediction .... )

It's part of the hardware. Maybe what you're meaning is that you're trying to detune the kernel and want to remove some of the optimisations? .. There are options in there to tell the compiler (gcc) whether a jump is more likely to be taken or not, which will allow it to alter the code ordering and therefore improve branch prediction hits. But there's no way to actually turn branch prediction off in the cpu, it's like the old turbo button on the front of your pc - why would anyone want to turn it off? (I know why, just trying to make a point)

Thanks for your help