from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
instruction prefetch
prefetch
<architecture> A technique which attempts to minimise the time
a {processor} spends waiting for {instructions} to be fetched
from memory. Instructions following the one currently being
executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's
{external bus} is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a
{branch} instruction or receives an {interrupt} then the queue
must be flushed and reloaded from the new address.
Instruction prefetch is often combined with {pipelining} in
an attempt to keep the pipeline busy.
By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. {Motorola
680x0}, {Intel 80x86}.
[First processors using prefetch?]
(1998-03-29)