Week 2

Question 1

What is a clock?

Answer 1

Anything that can be turned on and off.

Question 2

What is a clock cycle?

Answer 2

1/frequency.

Question 3

What is RISC architecture?

Answer 3

Reduced instruction set computer. Fewer, and simpler instructions.

Question 4

What is CISC architecture?

Answer 4

Complex instruction set computer. More(quantity), and more complex instructions.

Question 5

What is the principle of spatial locality?

Answer 5

It is very likely that words, around and near the currently used word, will be used in the near future. Therefore the cache stores BLOCKS of code to account for this.

Question 6

What is the principle of temporal locality?

Answer 6

It is very likely that a currently used word will be used again in the near future.

Question 7

5 items in the “wish list” to speed up instruction execution?

Answer 7

1. All instructions should be directly executed by hardware (complex and expensive).
2. Issue instructions as often/fast as possible (complex, expensive, and physical limitations such as speed of light, electron interference, and heat).
3. Instruction should be easy to decode (backwards compatibility, same-sized instructions)
4. Only LOAD and STORE instructions should reference main memory (when performing instructions we don’t want to reach into main memory because it is slow, instead we store information we think we’ll use into the cache and registers).
5. Provide lots of registers (expensive).