Method and system for calculating instruction lookahead

A computer-based method and system for determining designations for conditional branch operations and settings for lookahead values for a portion of a computer program. The lookahead system of the present invention evaluates various combinations of designations for the conditional branch operations for the portion of the computer program. The lookahead system generates a metric to measure the amount of parallel processing that would result from each combination of designations assuming that the lookahead values are set to optimal values for that combination. This metric may take into consideration estimated or actual execution frequencies of the instructions. The lookahead system then designates the conditional branch operations and sets the lookahead values based on the metric generated for one of the combinations.