METHODS AND APPARATUSES FOR INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDING A MISPREDICTION HANDLING HINT TO REDUCE A BRANCH MISPREDICTION PENALTY

Techniques for implementing a branch instruction having a misprediction handling hint to prevent instructions on a mispredicted path from getting cancelled are described. In certain examples, a hardware processor core includes a retirement circuit; a branch predictor circuit to predict a predicted path for a branch, and cause a speculative processing of the predicted path; a decode circuit to decode a single instruction into a decoded instruction, the single instruction having a field to indicate the retirement circuit is to allow retirement of the predicted path for the branch that is a misprediction; and an execution circuit to execute the decoded instruction to cause: the retirement circuit to allow the retirement of the predicted path that is the misprediction for the branch when the field is set to a first value, and the retirement circuit to disallow the retirement of the predicted path that is the misprediction for the branch when the field is otherwise.