Problem Set 8

Question 1

Which status flag listed below activates or set to “0” if a result of an operation is either a positive or a negative number?

Answer 1

Negative flag

Question 2

What is the reason why assembly language programmers makes use of the general purpose registers rather than main memory?

Answer 2

registers can transfer data faster than main memory

Question 3

Which element if a modern CPU is responsible for processing op-codes and converting the to uOps?

Answer 3

Instruction decoder

Question 4

CCR stand for

Answer 4

Condition Code Register

Question 5

Which of the following execution units is primarily tasked to perform basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on floating point numbers?

Answer 5

Floating Point

Question 6

In which pipeline stage does the microprocessor reads an instruction or command from a program stored in the main memory and copies the op-codes to the instruction register?

Answer 6

Fetch

Question 7

Which of the registers given below can be classified as an address register, since it also holds a memory address?

Answer 7

Index register

Question 8

Which of the following x86 instruction set extension added streaming single-instruction with multiple-data functionality to INTEL microprocessors?

Answer 8

SSE or Streaming SIMD Extensions

Question 9

The main purpose of this register is to accumulate data being processed by the ALU of the microprocessor.

Answer 9

Accumulator

Question 10

In the processing units that calculated addresses used by the CPU, what does the acronym AGU stand for.

Answer 10

Address Generation Unit

Question 11

Before what pipeline stage is “ branch prediction” performed?

Answer 11

Just before the beginning of the execute stage

Question 12

In the machine cycle of a CPU, what is another term for the stage that saves/stores the resulting data?

Answer 12

Write-back

Question 13

What will be the value of the Carry-flag if the microprocessor operation results to a carry bit.

Answer 13

1

Question 14

Based on the theoretical elements of a microprocessor, which element is NOT a part of the Control Unit?

Answer 14

Integer execution unit

Question 15

Which of the following modern CPU element is found at the Front-End of a microprocessor architecture.

Answer 15

Instruction queue

Question 16

In the modern microprocessor architecture discussed in Tutorial video, which microprocessor element below is found at the very beginning of the execute stage?

Answer 16

Instruction queue

Question 17

On a modern CPU architecture, where does the instruction decoder belong?

Answer 17

Front-end

Question 18

This logic circuit is a fundamental building block of a microprocessor register.

Answer 18

flip-flop

Question 19

The ENIAC was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, which was completed in 1945. What does the ENIAC stand for?

Answer 19

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

Question 20

Who patented the first integrated circuit on a monolithic die?

Answer 20

Robert Noyce

Question 21

In the process of out-of-order execution in a microprocessor, which of the following step needs to be performed first, before the rest?

Answer 21

receive the Ops provided by the front-end

Question 22

In machine programming or in general, which of the following instructions usually comes before a “BRANCH” instruction?

Answer 22

COMPARE

Question 23

Based on the Tutorial Video, what links the ISA to the microarchitecture of a CPU?

Answer 23

micro-operations

Question 24

Which type of register is used to determine and identify the location of a specific data in the system memory?

Answer 24

Address register

Question 25

This is the taken condition when a CPU executes a new instruction with a branch, without knowing if that branch has been taken or not.

Answer 25

speculative execution