CS 6303 COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

QUESTION BANK

UNIT I OVERVIEW AND INSTRUCTIONS

PART-A
1. What are the eight great ideas in computer architecture?
2. What are the five classic components of a computer?
3. What is the function of data path and control path?
4. What is instruction set Architecture?
5. Define application binary interface
6. Differentiate DRAM and SRAM.
7. Compare Volatile and nonvolatile memory.
8. List the advantages of Network Computer.
9. Define VLSI
10. Differentiate Throughput and Response Time
11. Write the CPU performance equation.
12. If computer A runs a program in 10 seconds, and computer B runs the same program in
15 seconds, how much faster is A over B.
13. Write the formula for CPU execution time for a program
14. Write the formula for CPU clock cycles required for a program.
15. How will you measure the dynamic power dissipppation?
16. Define – Stored Program Concepts
17. What are the fields in an MIPS instruction?
18. List the advantages of multiprocessor over uniprocessor.
19. What are the different types of operands? Give examples
20. List the different addressing modes.
21. Compare RISC and CISC architecture.
22. State the basic performance equation.
23. Write the register transfer sequence to read a word from memory.
24. What are the functions of control unit?

16-Marks Questions

1. Discuss in detail about Eight great ideas of computer Architecture.

2. Explain in detail about Technologies for Building Processors and Memory
3. Explain the various components of computer System with neat diagram (16)
4. Discuss in detail the various measures of performance of a computer(16)
5. Define addressing mode and explain the basic addressing modes with an example for
each.
6. Explain operations and operands of computer Hardware in detail (16)
7. Discuss the Logical operations and control operations of computer (12)
8. Write short notes on Power wall(6)
9. Consider three different processors P1, P2, and P3 executing the same instruction set. P1
has a 3 GHz clock rate and a CPI of 1.5. P2 has a 2.5 GHz clock rate and a CPI of 1.0. P3
has a 4.0 GHz clock rate and has a CPI of 2.2.
 a. Which processor has the highest performance expressed in instructions per
second?
b. If the processors each execute a program in 10 seconds, find the number of
cycles and the number of instructions.
c. We are trying to reduce the execution time by 30% but this leads to an increase of
20% in the CPI. What clock rate should we have to get this time reduction?
10. Assume a program requires the execution of 50 × 106 FP instructions, 110 × 106
INT instructions, 80 × 106 L/S instructions, and 16 × 106 branch instructions. The CPI
for each type of instruction is 1, 1, 4, and 2, respectively. Assume that the processor has a
2 GHz clock rate.
a. By how much must we improve the CPI of FP instructions if we want the
program to run two times faster?
b. By how much must we improve the CPI of L/S instructions if we want the
program to run two times faster?
c. By how much is the execution time of the program improved if the CPI of INT
and FP instructions are reduced by 40% and the CPI of L/S and Branch is reduced
by 30%?
11. Explain Branching operations with example
12. Explain the following addressing modes in detail with diagram
i) Immediate addressing
ii) Register addressing
iii) Base or displacement addressing
iv) PC-relative addressing
v) Pseudo direct addressing
13. Deduce the concept of performance and factors projecting the performance.
14. Explain different types of instructions with examples and compare their relative merits and
demerits.
15. Briefly discuss about the connection between CPU and coprocessor.

UNIT II ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS

2-Marks
1. Add 610 to 710 in binary and Subtract 610 from 710 in binary
2. Write the overflow conditions for addition and subtraction.
3. Draw the Multiplication hardware diagram.
4. List the steps of multiplication algorithm.
5. What is fast multiplication?
6. List the steps of division algorithm.
7. What is scientific notation and normalization? Give an example.
8. Give the representation of single precision floating point number.
9. Define overflow and under flow with examples.
10. Give the representation of double precision floating point number.
11. What are the floating point instructions in MIPS?
12. What are the steps of floating point addition?
13. List the steps of floating point multiplication.
14. Define – Guard and Round.
15. Write the IEEE 754 floating point format.
16. What is meant by sub-word parallelism?
17. Multiply 100010 * 100110.
18. Divide 1,001,010(10) by 1000(10).
 19. Write the MIPS assembly code for the following C
expression? f = g + (h − 5)
20. Write the corresponding C statements for the following MIPS assembly
instructions add f, g, h
add f, i, f
21. What is the advantage of booth algorithm?
22. Write the algorithm for restoring division.
23. State the principle of operation of a carry look-ahead adder.
24. Define subword parallelism.
16-Marks Questions
1. Explain the Multiplication algorithm in detail with diagram and examples.
2. Discuss in detail about division algorithm in detail with diagram and examples.
3. Explain in detail about floating point addition with example.
4. Explain in detail about floating point multiplication.
5. Give the algorithm for multiplication of signed 2’s complement numbers and illustrate
with an example.
6. Multiply the following pair of signed 2’s complement numbers :
A = 010111, B = 101100.
7. Add the numbers 0.510 and -0.437510using binary Floating point Addition algorithm.
8. Multiply 1.10 10X 1010 and 9.200X10-5 using binary Floating point multiplication.
9. Calculate the division of A and B
A: 3.264 X 103 B: 6.52 X 102
10. Show the IEEE 754 binary representation of the number -0.75 10in single and double
precision
11. Explain with an example how to multiply two unsigned binary numbers and also draw its
block diagram.
12. Analyze the design of ALU in detail.
13. Explain the concept behind booth’s multiplication algorithm. What are its advantages?
Multiply the following signed 2’s complement numbers using booth’s multiplication
technique. A=010111 and B=110110.
14. With neat diagram explain the floating point addition/ subtraction unit.
15. Construct combinational ALU and explain its operation.
16. Design binary adder / subtractor circuit and deduce its operation.
17. Analyze the operation of fast adder and design it.
18. Explain the nonrestoring division algorithm for unsigned integers and using the algorithm
calculate the quotient and remainder of 1101011 divided by 1010.

UNIT III
PROCESSOR AND CONTROL UNIT
PART-A
1.Define MIPs.
2.Define MIPS rate
3.Define Pipelining.
4.Define Paralllel processing.
5.Define Instruction Pipelining.
6.What are Hazards?
7.State the different types of hazards in pipelining
8.Define Data hazards.
9.Define instruction and structural hazards.
10.How data hazard can be prevented in pipeinning?
11.How addressing modes affect instruction pipelining?
12.What is locality of reference?
13.Define Memory access time and cycle time
14.How interrupts can be handled during Exception?
15.List out the methods used to improve system performance

PART-B
1. State and explain the different types of hazards that can occur in a pipeline.
2.Draw and explain the structure of a superscalar processor. Also explain the flow of
instruction execution in it.
3. Explain the control implemation scheme in detail
4. Implement basic structure of MIPS
5. Define datahazard and instruction hazard and explain in detail
6. Explain pipelined data path and control path
7. What are the two aspects of machine instruction? Explain it .
8. .Draw and explain the modified three-bus structure of the processor suitable for four -stage
pipelined execution. How this structure is suitable to provide four-stage pipelined execution?

UNIT-IV :
PARALLELISM
PART-A
1. Define parallel processing
2. Define multiprocessor system
3. Define parallel processing program
4. What is cluster
5. What is multicore
6. What is CMP and SMP
7. What is strong scaling
8. What is SISD
9. What is SIMD
10. What is MISD
11. What is hardware multithreading
12. Define interleaved or fine grained multithreading
13. Define blocked or coarse grained multithreading
14. What is UMA processor
15. What is NUMA processor

PART B
1. Explain flyn’s classification in detail

2. Discuss the principle of hardware multithreading and elaborate its types

3. What are multicore processors and explain it

4. Deduce the challenges faced in parallelism

5. Discuss in detail instruction level parallelism

UNIT-V
MEMORY SYSTEM MEMORY AND I/O SYSTEMS
PART-A
1.Give the classification of the Optical Media
2. What is a Mini Disk?
3. List some applications for WORM.
4. What are multifunctional drives
5. What are types of technology used in s multifunctional drive?
6. What is Migration and Archiving?
7. What is the use of High water marks in a cache?
8. What are the various cache usage in a LAN –based system?
9. What are the multimedia applications which use caches?
10. Explain virtual memory technique.
11. What are virtual and logical addresses?
12. Define translation buffer.
13. What is branch delay slot?
14. What is optical memory?
15. What are static and dynamic memories?
16. What are the components of memory management unit?
17. Distinguish Between Static RAM and Dynamic RAM?
18. Distiguish between asynchronies DRAM and synchronous RAM.

PART B
1. Define cache memory. Explain the mapping process followed in cache memory. Also
discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of the mapping techniques used.
2. What is virtual memory? Why is it necessary to implement virtual memory? Explain the
virtual memory address translation.
3. Draw and explain the various types of secondary storage devices.
4. List the different types of interrupts. Explain briefly about mask able interrupt.
5. What is DMA? Explain the block diagram of DMA .Also describe how DMA is used to
transfer data from peripherals.
6. Explain input/output processors