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Concept
Branch (computer science)
Summary
A branch is an instruction in a computer program that can cause a computer to begin executing a different instruction sequence and thus deviate from its default behavior of executing instructions in order. Branch (or branching, branched) may also refer to the act of switching execution to a different instruction sequence as a result of executing a branch instruction. Branch instructions are used to implement control flow in program loops and conditionals (i.e., executing a particular sequence of instructions only if certain conditions are satisfied).
A branch instruction can be either an unconditional branch, which always results in branching, or a conditional branch, which may or may not cause branching depending on some condition. Also, depending on how it specifies the address of the new instruction sequence (the "target" address), a branch instruction is generally classified as direct, indirect or relative, meaning that the instruction contains the target address, or it specifies where the target address is to be found (e.g., a register or memory location), or it specifies the difference between the current and target addresses.
Branch instructions can alter the contents of the CPU's Program Counter (or PC) (or Instruction Pointer on Intel microprocessors). The PC maintains the memory address of the next machine instruction to be fetched and executed. Therefore, a branch, if executed, causes the CPU to execute code from a new memory address, changing the program logic according to the algorithm planned by the programmer.
One type of machine level branch is the jump instruction. These may or may not result in the PC being loaded or modified with some new, different value other than what it ordinarily would have been (being incremented past the current instruction to point to the following, next instruction). Jumps typically have unconditional and conditional forms where the latter may be taken or not taken (the PC is modified or not) depending on some condition.
Official source
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