Describe briefly six factors which might influence
Describe an appropriate on-chip network to interconnect 32 SRAM banks to create a large LLC
March 21, 2023What does support for vector chaining and tailgating allow in a vector processor?
March 21, 2023Describe briefly six factors which might influence
COMPUTER SCIENCE TRIPOS Part II – 2016 – Paper 8
Comparative Architectures (RDM)
(a) Describe briefly six factors which might influence or constrain the design of a
new processor. [6 marks]
(b) The performance of a superscalar processor is often enhanced with hardware to
support the following:
• branch prediction
• register renaming
• out-of-order execution
• the speculative reordering of load instructions
• strided prefetching
(i) Sketch an assembly language program that would benefit from the use of
all of these techniques when executed on a superscalar processor. Briefly
describe how each of the techniques helps to improve the performance of
your program. [10 marks]
(ii) Briefly outline two example programs for which the adoption of the
techniques listed would not provide a significant performance improvement.
[4 marks]
