New Merced Patents

Intel and HP have been awarded 2 patents which reveal more about Merced. Speculatively executing both code paths originating at a conditional branch wastes resources which could be better used concentrating on one path. By applying speculative execution only when branch-prediction will probably fail, speculative execution is minimised to the cases where it will really help. In pretty much unrelated news, Intel's selling toys which might actually teach kids something.