- This will be a closed book exam.
- You may use a calculator, but you need to show the steps in solving the
problems, not just write down the answer.
- You may not use a calculator (such as a cell phone) that can access a network.
You are responsible for understanding all of assignments and material
from the textbook.
The exam will cover Chapter 3, through section 3.5.
Many of the problems on the exam will be similar to
recitation problems
and the
daily questions.
Chapter 3, sections 1-5
- Terminology: data dependence, name dependence, antidependence, output dependence, control dependence
- Identifying types of dependence (e.g. recitation quiz 8)
- Hazards: RAW, WAW, WAR, relationship to dependencies
- Compiler techniques: static scheduling and loop unrolling
- Advanced branch prediction: static prediction, prediction buffers, correlating branch predictors, tournament predictors
- Dynamic scheduling: Tomasulo's algorithm (more than half of the exam)
- reservation stations: understand how they work
- what is required to issue, execute, write result
- filling in tables like examples from class and recitations 11 and 12
Note: for the Tomasulo diagrams on the exam, all questions will have the following instructions:
- There are sufficient reservation stations.
- There is only one functional unit that does both floating point add and subtract.
- There is only one functional unit that does multiply and divide.
- Execution times are as follows: load: 1, fadd: x, fsub: y, fmul:z, fdiv: w
The values if x, y, z, and w will be given.
- The L.D execution is the address calculation that uses dedicated hardware that can do the calculation
in one cycle.
- Some L.D instructions will be cache hits and some will be cache misses with a given miss penalty.
- Floating point units (fadd and fmul) are busy during execution and can be reused the cycle after
the result gets put on the CDB.
- If two reservation stations are both ready and competing for the same resource, the one that
issued first has priority.
countdown to exam start
countdown to exam end
Back to CS 3853 Homepage