1. In a data processor of the type having a pipeline system for executing pipeline processing on a sequence of instructions, including branch instructions, corresponding to associated instruction addresses and having a prefetch unit for preliminary fetching instructions corresponding to instruction addresses provided thereto, an instruction decoder that receives an instruction from said prefetch unit and that decodes the received instruction, and an instruction execution unit that receives the decoded instruction from said instruction decoder and executes said instruction, a branch prediction system comprising: a branch prediction unit, having a branch prediction table with branch prediction information stored therein for predicting whether the branch condition of a given branch instruction will be established; means for accessing the branch prediction information for said given branch instruction, prior to decoding the given branch instruction, with the instruction address of a selected instruction that precedes the given branch instruction in the sequence of instructions.