Yes the Haswell branch prediction is so good that it obsoleted previous &quot;best strategies&quot; for fast interpreter loops.<p>See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hal.inria.fr&#x2F;hal-01100647&#x2F;document" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hal.inria.fr&#x2F;hal-01100647&#x2F;document</a><p>But unfortunately a lot of real code is so big these days that it thrashes all caches, including branch prediction.<p>Big is slow.