🚀 go-pugleaf

While I would agree that many subroutines calls, or even a threaded
interpreter, would tend to undermine *sequential* instruction reference, and
thus substantially affect the performance of a sequential pre-fetch buffer, a
true cache is insensitive to jumps. What matters for cache performance is the
the *total volume* of instruction locations referenced over a range of time,
and whether they tend to fit in the cache. Processor performance may still be
adversely affected, since it may still be faster to buffer and deliver
sequential instruction words than to take a jump, especially on a fast
pipelined machine, like many RISC cpus.

--

		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
		Department of Computer and Information Science
		Lederle Graduate Research Center
		University of Massachusetts
		Amherst, MA  01003
		(413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu