A step by step explenation would be nice to answer this question. Consider a program that executes a large number of instructions. Assume that the program does not suffer from stalls from data hazards or structural hazards. Assume that 20% of all instructions are branch instructions, and 75% of these branch instructions are Taken. What is the average CPI for this program when it executes on each of the processors listed below? All of these processors implement an 10-stage pipeline and resolve a branch outcome at the end of the 4th stage. The 1st stage fetches an instruction, the 2nd stage does decode, the 3rd stage does register read, and the 4th stage does the computations for the branch.

A) The processor pauses instruction fetch as soon as it fetches a branch. Instruction fetch is resumed after the branch outcome has been resolved.

B) The processor always fetches instructions sequentially. If a branch is resolved as Taken, the incorrectly fetched instructions after the branch are squashed.

C) The processor implements three branch delay slots. The compiler fills the branch delay slots with three instructions that come before the branch in the original code (option A in the videos).

D) The processor does not implement branch delay slots. Instead, it implements a hardware branch predictor that makes correct predictions for 90% of all branches. When an incorrect prediction is discovered, the incorrectly fetched instructions after the branch are squashed.