USN 14PHDCS002

Ph.D./M.Sc. (Engg.) by Research Degree Examination, September 2015

Advance in Computer Architecture

Time: 3 hrs. Max. Marks:100

Note: Answer any FIVE full questions.

1 a. Explain the simplification method of Quine – mcClusky method with an example. (10 Marks)
b. Write a note on floating point addition. (10 Marks)

2 a. State and explain Amdahl’s law. Suppose it is required to enhance the processor used for
web serving, the new processor is 10 times faster on computation in the web serving
application than the original processor. Assuming that the original processor is busy with
computation 40% of the time, and is waiting for i/o 60% of the time, What is the overall
speed gained by in corporating the enhancement? (10 Marks)
b. Define computer Architecture. Illustrate the seven dimensions of ISA. (10 Marks)

3 a. Explain with a neat diagram he basic organization of a micro programmed control unit.
(10 Marks)
b. What are the major hurdles of pipelining? Explain any one of the hazards in detail. (10 Marks)

4 a. With a basic structure of a MIPS floating point unit, explain Tomasulo’s Algorithm.
(10 Marks)
b. Explain DRAM technology with a diagram. (10 Marks)

5 a. Explain the six basic cache optimizations. (10 Marks)

b. What is virtual memory? With diagram explain how virtual memory address and translated.
(10 Marks)

6 a. Explain the basic schemes for enforcing coherence. (10 Marks)

b. Explain the advanced techniques for instruction delivery and speculation. (10 Marks)

7 a. Explain detecting and enhancing loop level parallelism for VLIW. (10 Marks)
b. Explain hardware support for exposing parallelism for VLIW and EPIC. (10 Marks)

8 a. Briefly explain the four reality stages of Tiled multicore processors. (10 Marks)
b. Write a note on speculative multithreaded architecture. (10 Marks)

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