Checkpoint processing and recovery: an efficient, scalable alternative to reorder buffers

Processors require a combination of large instruction windows and high clock frequency to achieve high performance. Traditional processors use reorder buffers, but these structures do not scale efficiently as window size increases. A new technique, checkpoint processing and recovery, offers an efficient means of increasing the instruction window size without requiring large, cycle-critical structures, and provides a promising microarchitecture for future high-performance processors.