Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
metic. The educated architect was expected to have strong opinions about the strengths and
especially the weaknesses of the popular computers. The importance of binary compatibility
in quashing innovations in instruction set design was unappreciated by many researchers and
textbook writers, giving the impression that many architects would get a chance to design an
instruction set.
The definition of computer architecture today has been expanded to include design and
evaluation of the full computer system—not just the definition of the instruction set and not
just the processor—and hence there are plenty of topics for the architect to study. In fact, the
material in this appendix was a central point of the topic in its irst edition in 1990, but now is
included in an appendix primarily as reference material!
Appendix K may satisfy readers interested in instruction set architecture; it describes a vari-
ety of instruction sets, which are either important in the marketplace today or historically im-
portant, and it compares nine popular load-store computers with MIPS.
A.12 Historical Perspective and References
Section L.4 (available online) features a discussion on the evolution of instruction sets and in-
cludes references for further reading and exploration of related topics.
Exercises by Gregory D. Peterson
A.1 [15] <A.9> Compute the effective CPI for MIPS using Figure A.27 . Assume we have made
the following measurements of average CPI for instruction types:
Instruction
Clock Cycles
All ALU instructions
1.0
Loads-stores
1.4
Conditional branches
Taken
2.0
Not taken
1.5
Jumps
1.2
Assume that 60% of the conditional branches are taken and that all instructions in the “other”
category of Figure A.27 are ALU instructions. Average the instruction frequencies of gap and
gcc to obtain the instruction mix.
A.3 [15] <A.9> Compute the effective CPI for MIPS using Figure A.27 and the table above.
Average the instruction frequencies of gzip and perlbmk to obtain the instruction mix.
1.2 [20] <A.9> Compute the effective CPI for MIPS using Figure A.28 . Assume we have made
the following measurements of average CPI for instruction types:
 
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search