I agree that we should be able to tell the processor which branch is more likely. Even something as simple as a flag to select between "I prefer you take any jump you encounter" and "I prefer you skip all jumps in this macroblock for speculation purposes" (and also "try to predict smartly" to stick to how it's working now, aka what this article is about). This would give a determined programmer everything he needs to make sure his program is executed optimally.