Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Faculty of Science & Information Technology

Midterm Examination, Semester: Spring - 2021
Course Code: CSE 322, Course Title: Computer Architecture & Organization
Section: All Course Teachers: RR

Time: 2.5 hours Marks: 25

[Answer all of the following questions. You must also explain your answers and any
references used]

The figure in square brace at the right side of a question indicates the marks allocated to the
questions. The symbols and notations used carry their usual meanings.]

1. a) The following table shows the execution times, in seconds, for five different 12
benchmark programs on three machines. Here R, M, Z are multiprocessor
system with 8, 5, 10 processors respectively. [No. of processors, R=8, M=5,
Z=10]

a. Compute the rate metric for each processor for each benchmark, normalized
to machine R. That is, the ratio values for R are all 1.0. Other ratios are
calculated with R treated as the reference system. Then compute the geometric
mean value for each system.
b. Repeat part (a) using M as the reference machine.
c. Which machine is the slowest based on each of the preceding two
calculations?
d. Repeat the calculations of parts (a) and (b) using the arithmetic mean. Which
machine is the slowest based on the two calculations?
 b) 7

Consider the example data above for the calculation of average CPI and MIPS
rate. Now assume that the program can be executed in four parallel tasks or
threads with roughly equal number of instructions executed in each task.
Execution is on a 4-core system with each core (processor) having the same
performance as the single processor originally used. Coordination and
synchronization between the parts adds an extra 50,000 instruction executions
to each task. Assume the same instruction mix as in the example for each task.
a. Determine the average CPI.
b. Determine the corresponding MIPS rate.
c. Calculate the speedup factor.
d. Compare the actual speedup factor with the theoretical speedup factor deter-
mined by Amdhal’s law.

2. a) 6

The hypothetical machine above also has two I/O instructions:

0011 = Load AC from I/O
0111 = Store AC to I/O
In these cases, the 12-bit address identifies a particular I/O device. Show the
program execution for the following program:
i. Load AC from device 5.
ii. Add contents of memory location 940.
iii. Store AC to device 6.
Assume that the next value retrieved from device 5 is 3 and that location 940
contains a value of 2.