THE FIRST MIDTERM JehanFranois Pris jfparissbcglobal net MATERIALS

THE FIRST MIDTERM Jehan-François Pâris jfparis@sbcglobal. net

MATERIALS • Chapter I Introduction • Chapter II Principles of Digital Circuits – Combinatorial Circuits, Latches and Flipflops, Sequential Circuits • Chapter III Instruction Set Design – Generalities, Examples (IBM, MIPS, ARM, x 86), Conclusions • Chapter IV Computer Arithmetic – Integer addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

Important • Floating-point arithmetic will not be on the test.

Chapter I • Very little to study • Understand how SPEC benchmarks are computed, including the use of the geometric means • Expect at least one problem on Amdahl’s Law

Amdahl’s Law (III) • The total speedup for the whole system will be • The maximum possible speedup when Ti 0

Chapter II • Expect problems similar to those in the first problem set but shorter • You should also be able to read and understand complex combinatorial circuits and simple sequential circuits

Chapter III • Focus on generalities and conclusions • You do not need to memorize the MIPS instruction set but need to know – The three MIPS instruction formats and their addressing modes – How some specific MIPS instructions work – The role of the zero register

Example • Given the instruction – ADDI r 1, r 2, #m explain how you can increment by four the contents of register $s 4 – ADDI $s 4, #4

Chapter IV • Understand signed and unsigned binary numbers and how to change the sign of a number – Expect one or two problems – Understand the various designs for adders, subtraction engines, multipliers and dividers