I understand what is explained here as well as these would include hints to CPU for static branch prediction.
I was wondering how relevant are these on Intel CPUs now that Intel CPUs have dropped support for static prediction hints as mentioned here. Also if I understand how it works now, the number of branch instructions in the path would be the only thing that the compiler can control and which branch path is predicted, fetched and decoded is decided at runtime.
Given this, are there any scenarios where branch hints in code are still useful for software targeting recent Intel processors, perhaps using conditional return or for avoiding the number of branch instructions in the critical path in case of nested if/else statements?
Also, if these are still relevant, any specifics on gcc and other popular compilers are appreciated.
P.S. I am not for premature optimization or for peppering the code with these macros, but I am interested in the topic as I am working with some time critical code and still like to reduce code clutter where possible.
Thanks