Instruction-Level Design: Instruction Count, CPI, Clock Cycle Time,
Critical Path, Datapath vs Controller, Sequential Circuit Registers,
Single-Cycle Processing, R-Type Operations, Load/Store and Branch
Instructions, Immediate, Register, Base, PC-Relative, and Pseudo-
Direct Addressing, Opcode Functions, ALU Control, Synchronization,
Pseudoinstructions, Dynamic Linking, MIPS 32-Bit Instruction
Encoding, Clock Period Determination, T(on)/T(off), and Total Cycles
Calculation for High-Performance Processor Architectures Exam
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CPU Performance factors
-Instruction Count
-CPI
-Cycle Time
Low Voltage
Equals 0
High Voltage
Equals 1
, Registers Role in Sequential Circuit
Stores data
Clock Period
Determined by longest delay
T (period)
T(off) + T(on)
Datapath
Elements that process data and addresses in the CPU
Datapath vs Controller
The datapath handles all required arithmetic computations while the controller is responsible
for telling the datapath what to do according to the instructions in the executing program
Instruction Execution
PC -> Instruction Memory, fetch instruction