How and why CPUs do “branch prediction” (2017)
In some/many cases there is code before the branch that does not influence the branch condition. In that case, would it be possible to architect the cpu such that it could execute the branch 'early'? I'm thinking of a special asm instruction like 'execute the next 4 instructions, and only then do the conditional jump'.E.g. instead of:  i=0
  StartLoop:
  i+=1
  do_stuff_0
  do_stuff_1
  do_stuff_2
  do_stuff_3
  if i<N goto StartLoop

we would have:  i=0
  StartLoop:
  i+=1
  do_stuff_0
  do_stuff_1
  if i<N goto StartLoop in 2 instructions
  do_stuff_2
  do_stuff_3