CSC632 – COMPUTER ARCHTECTURE TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
1. Briefly explain the following: (i) latency (ii) throughput (iii). Instruction set
2. In response to feedback from customers of M&B cloud Nigeria on response time and throughput of their
server, the system engineers of the organization proposed two solutions: (i) a GPU server with a faster
clock speed, (ii) separate servers to handle for different tasks. Discuss the effect of these enhancement on
response time, throughput or both.
3. Briefly discuss the effects of advancements in computer hardware technology on computer software
industry.
4. Describe In-Order Issue with Out-of-Order completion
5. Briefly explain how the following has contributed to system execution or response time and throughput: i.
Cache Memory ii. Main Memory iii. Bus Address System.
6. In a microcomputer, the addresses of memory locations are binary numbers that identify each memory
circuit where a byte is stored. The number of bits that make up an address depends on how many memory
locations there are. Since the number of bits can be very large, the addresses are often specified in hex
instead of binary.
i. If a microcomputer uses a 20-bit address, how many different memory locations are there?
ii. How many hex digits are needed to represent the address of a memory location there?
iii. What is the hex address of the 255th memory location? (Note: The first address is always 0)
iv. The computer program is stored in the lowest 2kbyte block of memory. Give the start and end address
of this block.
7. What is the major concept of RISC architecture? Discuss any five characteristics of RISC and CISC
processors.
8. Consider a 32-bit machine with 64KB cache, 32B block and two-way set-associative cache, obtain the
offset bits, index bits and tag bits for mapping addresses to frames on this machine.
9. Write short notes on memory hierarchy considering capacity, access time and cost.
10. For a car ignition to be turned on: (i) the driver must be in the car having all the doors locked having the
gear in parking or neutral state, or (ii) the car can be put on using a remote starter from outside without the
driver in the car, but all the car doors must be locked with hand brake on and gear in parking state or neutral.
Any deviations from these two conditions will set the car security alarm on.
i. What are the variables to be used in representing the states?
ii. Design a logic circuit for the scenario
iii. Modify the design to set the car alarm on for a second after the ignition must have been on for five
minutes provided the doors, gear and handbrake are at the initial state and then off the ignition if the
states remain the same after the last second.
11. A common transformation required in graphics processors is square root. Implementations of floating-point
(FP) square root vary significantly in performance, especially among processors designed for graphics.
Suppose FP square root (FPSQR) is responsible for 20% of the execution time of a critical graphics
benchmark. One proposal is to enhance the FPSQR hardware and speed up this operation by a factor of 10.
The other alternative is just to try to make all FP instructions in the graphics processor run faster by a factor
of 1.6; FP instructions are responsible for half of the execution time for the application. The design team
believes that they can make all FP instructions run 1.6 times faster with the same effort as required for the
fast square root. Compare these two design alternatives.