US Patent 7966479 Concurrent vs. low power branch prediction

An instruction processing circuit includes a decoder circuit, a basic block builder circuit, a multi-block builder circuit, first and second predictor circuits, and a sequencer circuit, where the sequencer circuit is operable, in a first environment, to cause the first predictor circuit to generate a prediction for a particular conditional branch op concurrently with the second predictor circuit generating a prediction for another particular conditional branch op, where the sequencer circuit is also operable, in a second environment, to cause the first predictor circuit to generate a prediction for the particular conditional branch op sequentially with the second predictor circuit generating a prediction for the another particular conditional branch operation.