Midterm 2 -- Closed book section

27 April, 1995

The entire exam is to be turned in at 5:45 PM. Work the closed book section first and turn it in before you consult your books and notes to work on the open book section. The use of calculators is forbidden during the closed book section of the exam.

Problem 1 (15 points)

Briefly explain the differences between the following pairs of terms?

• Restoring division vs. non-restoring division
• Memory-mapped I/O vs. programmed I/O
• Parallel transfer vs. serial transfer

Problem 2 (5 points)

Express 13.0 as a 32-bit floating point number with a one-bit sign, an eight-bit exponent, and a 23-bit mantissa. Use excess-127 notation in the exponent.

Problem 3 (5 points)

Express -300 in 10-bit two's complement notation.

Problem 4 (25 points)

The following devices and/or concepts will be used in the Intel P6 to improve performance. Explain the meaning of the following terms and explain how the related concept makes the P6 run faster.

• Speculative execution
• Register Alias Table
• Out-of-order execution
• Micro-op's
• Branch Target Buffer (BTB)

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