What is a forwarding unit in computational architecture?

A forwarding unit in computational architecture is a hardware component that is responsible for routing data between different units within a microprocessor or computer architecture. It is also known as a bypass unit or a forwarding mechanism. The purpose of a forwarding unit is to improve the efficiency of data processing by reducing the number of stalls or delays that can occur during execution. This is achieved by detecting dependencies between instructions and forwarding data from an earlier instruction directly to a later instruction that requires it, bypassing the need to wait for the data to be written to memory and retrieved later. This increases the speed and performance of the processor by reducing the number of cycles required to execute instructions.

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