Description
Problem 1. (20 points) The following instructions executed on a 5-stage pipelined datapath:
I. If there is no forwarding or hazard detection, insert NOPS to ensure correct
execution. (Hint: for the first sw instruction, register r1 needs to be written first by
“add” instruction and then sw instruction can read it.)
II. In this case, use NOPS only when changing or rearranging instructions cannot
avoid a hazard. You can assume register R7 can be used to hold temporary values
in your modified code.
add r1, r5, r3
sw r1, 0(r2)
lw r1, 4(r2)
add r5, r5, r1
sw r1, 0(r2)
Problem 2. (20 points) Calculate how many clock cycles will take execution of the following
segment one RISC-V simple pipeline without forwarding when the outcome of branch
instruction is available after EXE stage. Draw the pipelined diagram for this question.
lw r1, 0(r4)
lw r2, 400(r4)
addi r3, r1, r2
sw r3, 0(r4)
sub r4, r4, 4
beq r4, r5, L1
Problem 3. (20 points) The individual stages of datapath have the following latencies:
IF ID EXE MEM WB
250ps 350ps 150ps 300ps 200ps
Also, assume that instructions executed by the processor are broken down as follows:
ALU Branch Load Store
45% 20% 15% 20%
a) What is the clock cycle time in a pipelined and non-pipelined processor?
b) What is the total latency of ld instruction in a pipelined and non-pipelined processor?
c) Assuming there are no hazards or stalls, what is the utilization of data memory?
(Utilization is the fraction of clock cycles in which data memory is used).
d) Assuming there are no hazards or stalls, what is the utilization of register block’s
write port?
Problem 4. (20 points) Consider the following sequence of instructions being processed on the
5-stage RISC-V pipelined processor:
lw r4, 100(r2)
add r5, r2, r3
sub r6, r4, r5
and r7, r2, r5
a) Identify all the data dependencies in the above instruction sequence. For each
dependency, indicate the two instructions and the register that causes the dependency.
b) Assume that the pipelined uses full forwarding. Draw a pipelined diagram that
represents the flow of instructions through the pipeline during each clock cycle. Indicate
forwarding by arrows.
Problem 5 (20 points):
One particular branch (i.e., one specific PC) has the following actual outcomes. Show the predictions
for both a one-bit counter and a two-bit counter (no history). For the two-bit counter, use T for strongly
taken t for weakly taken, n for weakly not-taken, and N for strongly not taken. Finally fill in the
accuracy (percentage of predictions that were correct) at the bottom of the table. The first prediction is
done for you.
Branch Outcome 1-bit predictor
Prediction Correct?
2-bit predictor
Prediction Correct?
T T Yes T yes
T
T
N
T
N
T
T
T
N
Accuracy
