Midterm #2

17 April, 1996

Problem 1. (10 points)

Why is good branch prediction important in a modem microprocessor?

Problem 2. (10 points)

The SPARC processor has pages of 8192 bytes and virtual addresses of 32 bits. How are the virtual addresses divided into virtual page numbers and page offsets?

Problem 3. (20 points)

Suppose a computer has a physical memory (RAM) of 16M 24 bits and a four-way set associative cache of 512k words organized into blocks of eight words. How are the physical addresses of the computer broken into tag, index, and word offset bits? Draw a diagram showing the physical organization of the cache.

Problem 6. (20 points)

D = A * A + 4 * B X = B * X Y = A + X Describe how to efficiently execute this code on a computer with RISC-like instruction set with load delay slots of size two? (Note: This means you need two instructions between storing and fetching register!)

Problem 7. (20 points)

Consider the following loop for storing the ten thousand squares of the integers from 1 to 10,000 into an array SQ.

               DO 100 N =1, 10000
          100  SQ(N) = N*N

What sort of techniques would a compiler use to generate efficient code for this loop on a superpipelined computer like the Pentium Pro or Alpha AXP?

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