2004 Paper 7 Question 1
Comparative Architectures
The IA-64 architecture includes a number of instruction set features that are
intended to allow compilers to generate code that will execute with fewer pipeline
stalls.
Explain how four of the following five features operate, and how they could be used
by a compiler to improve performance relative to more conventional instruction
sequences.
(a) Register windows for procedure call linkage.
(b) Not a Thing (NaT) “poison” bits associated with registers.
(c) Address aliasing table (ALAT) for load data speculation.
(d) Register file rotation.
(e) Parallel compares.
[5 marks each]