Editing Speedup (section)

===Using execution times===
We are testing the effectiveness of a [[branch predictor]] on the execution of a program. First, we execute the program with the standard branch predictor on the processor, which yields an execution time of 2.25 seconds. Next, we execute the program with our modified (and hopefully improved) branch predictor on the same processor, which produces an execution time of 1.50 seconds. In both cases the execution workload is the same. Using our speedup formula, we know
:<math>S_\text{latency} = \frac{L_\text{old}}{L_\text{new}} = \frac{2.25~\mathrm{s}}{1.50~\mathrm{s}} = 1.5.</math>
Our new branch predictor has provided a 1.5x speedup over the original.