William Stallings

Computer Organization
and Architecture
8th Edition

Chapter 12
Processor Structure and
Function
CPU Structure
• CPU must:
—Fetch instructions
—Interpret instructions
—Fetch data
—Process data
—Write data
CPU With Systems Bus
CPU Internal Structure
Registers
• CPU must have some working space
(temporary storage)
• Called registers
• Number and function vary between
processor designs
• One of the major design decisions
• Top level of memory hierarchy
User Visible Registers
• General Purpose
• Data
• Address
• Condition Codes
General Purpose Registers (1)
• May be true general purpose
• May be restricted
• May be used for data or addressing
• Data
—Accumulator
• Addressing
—Segment
General Purpose Registers (2)
• Make them general purpose
—Increase flexibility and programmer options
—Increase instruction size & complexity
• Make them specialized
—Smaller (faster) instructions
—Less flexibility
How Many GP Registers?
• Between 8 - 32
• Fewer = more memory references
• More does not reduce memory references
and takes up processor real estate
• See also RISC
How big?
• Large enough to hold full address
• Large enough to hold full word
• Often possible to combine two data
registers
—C programming
—double int a;
—long int a;
Condition Code Registers
• Sets of individual bits
—e.g. result of last operation was zero
• Can be read (implicitly) by programs
—e.g. Jump if zero
• Can not (usually) be set by programs
Control & Status Registers
• Program Counter
• Instruction Decoding Register
• Memory Address Register
• Memory Buffer Register

• Revision: what do these all do?

Program Status Word
• A set of bits
• Includes Condition Codes
• Sign of last result
• Zero
• Carry
• Equal
• Overflow
• Interrupt enable/disable
• Supervisor
Supervisor Mode
• Intel ring zero
• Kernel mode
• Allows privileged instructions to execute
• Used by operating system
• Not available to user programs
Other Registers
• May have registers pointing to:
—Process control blocks (see O/S)
—Interrupt Vectors (see O/S)

• N.B. CPU design and operating system

design are closely linked
Example Register Organizations
Instruction Cycle
• Revision
• Stallings Chapter 3
Indirect Cycle
• May require memory access to fetch
operands
• Indirect addressing requires more
memory accesses
• Can be thought of as additional instruction
subcycle
Instruction Cycle with Indirect
Instruction Cycle State Diagram
Data Flow (Instruction Fetch)
• Depends on CPU design
• In general:

• Fetch
—PC contains address of next instruction
—Address moved to MAR
—Address placed on address bus
—Control unit requests memory read
—Result placed on data bus, copied to MBR,
then to IR
—Meanwhile PC incremented by 1
Data Flow (Data Fetch)
• IR is examined
• If indirect addressing, indirect cycle is
performed
—Right most N bits of MBR transferred to MAR
—Control unit requests memory read
—Result (address of operand) moved to MBR
Data Flow (Fetch Diagram)
Data Flow (Indirect Diagram)
Data Flow (Execute)
• May take many forms
• Depends on instruction being executed
• May include
—Memory read/write
—Input/Output
—Register transfers
—ALU operations
Data Flow (Interrupt)
• Simple
• Predictable
• Current PC saved to allow resumption
after interrupt
• Contents of PC copied to MBR
• Special memory location (e.g. stack
pointer) loaded to MAR
• MBR written to memory
• PC loaded with address of interrupt
handling routine
• Next instruction (first of interrupt handler)
can be fetched
Data Flow (Interrupt Diagram)
Prefetch
• Fetch accessing main memory
• Execution usually does not access main
memory
• Can fetch next instruction during
execution of current instruction
• Called instruction prefetch
Improved Performance
• But not doubled:
—Fetch usually shorter than execution
– Prefetch more than one instruction?
—Any jump or branch means that prefetched
instructions are not the required instructions
• Add more stages to improve performance
Pipelining
• Fetch instruction
• Decode instruction
• Calculate operands (i.e. EAs)
• Fetch operands
• Execute instructions
• Write result

• Overlap these operations

Two Stage Instruction Pipeline
Timing Diagram for
Instruction Pipeline Operation
The Effect of a Conditional Branch on
Instruction Pipeline Operation
Six Stage
Instruction Pipeline
Alternative Pipeline Depiction
Speedup Factors
with Instruction
Pipelining
Pipeline Hazards
• Pipeline, or some portion of pipeline, must
stall
• Also called pipeline bubble
• Types of hazards
—Resource
—Data
—Control
Resource Hazards
• Two (or more) instructions in pipeline need same resource
• Executed in serial rather than parallel for part of pipeline
• Also called structural hazard
• E.g. Assume simplified five-stage pipeline
— Each stage takes one clock cycle
• Ideal case is new instruction enters pipeline each clock cycle
• Assume main memory has single port
• Assume instruction fetches and data reads and writes performed
one at a time
• Ignore the cache
• Operand read or write cannot be performed in parallel with
instruction fetch
• Fetch instruction stage must idle for one cycle fetching I3

• E.g. multiple instructions ready to enter execute instruction phase

• Single ALU

• One solution: increase available resources

— Multiple main memory ports
— Multiple ALUs
Data Hazards
• Conflict in access of an operand location
• Two instructions to be executed in sequence
• Both access a particular memory or register operand
• If in strict sequence, no problem occurs
• If in a pipeline, operand value could be updated so as to
produce different result from strict sequential execution
• E.g. x86 machine instruction sequence:

• ADD EAX, EBX /* EAX = EAX + EBX

• SUB ECX, EAX /* ECX = ECX – EAX

• ADD instruction does not update EAX until end of stage 5,

at clock cycle 5
• SUB instruction needs value at beginning of its stage 2, at
clock cycle 4
• Pipeline must stall for two clocks cycles
• Without special hardware and specific avoidance
algorithms, results in inefficient pipeline usage
Data Hazard Diagram
Types of Data Hazard
• Read after write (RAW), or true dependency
— An instruction modifies a register or memory location
— Succeeding instruction reads data in that location
— Hazard if read takes place before write complete
• Write after read (RAW), or antidependency
— An instruction reads a register or memory location
— Succeeding instruction writes to location
— Hazard if write completes before read takes place
• Write after write (RAW), or output dependency
— Two instructions both write to same location
— Hazard if writes take place in reverse of order intended
sequence
• Previous example is RAW hazard
• See also Chapter 14
Resource Hazard Diagram
Control Hazard
• Also known as branch hazard
• Pipeline makes wrong decision on branch
prediction
• Brings instructions into pipeline that must
subsequently be discarded
• Dealing with Branches
—Multiple Streams
—Prefetch Branch Target
—Loop buffer
—Branch prediction
—Delayed branching
Multiple Streams
• Have two pipelines
• Prefetch each branch into a separate
pipeline
• Use appropriate pipeline

• Leads to bus & register contention

• Multiple branches lead to further pipelines
being needed
Prefetch Branch Target
• Target of branch is prefetched in addition
to instructions following branch
• Keep target until branch is executed
• Used by IBM 360/91
Loop Buffer
• Very fast memory
• Maintained by fetch stage of pipeline
• Check buffer before fetching from
memory
• Very good for small loops or jumps
• c.f. cache
• Used by CRAY-1
Loop Buffer Diagram
Branch Prediction (1)
• Predict never taken
—Assume that jump will not happen
—Always fetch next instruction
—68020 & VAX 11/780
—VAX will not prefetch after branch if a page
fault would result (O/S v CPU design)
• Predict always taken
—Assume that jump will happen
—Always fetch target instruction
Branch Prediction (2)
• Predict by Opcode
—Some instructions are more likely to result in a
jump than thers
—Can get up to 75% success
• Taken/Not taken switch
—Based on previous history
—Good for loops
—Refined by two-level or correlation-based
branch history
• Correlation-based
—In loop-closing branches, history is good
predictor
—In more complex structures, branch direction
correlates with that of related branches
– Use recent branch history as well
Branch Prediction (3)
• Delayed Branch
—Do not take jump until you have to
—Rearrange instructions
Branch Prediction Flowchart
Branch Prediction State Diagram
Dealing With
Branches
Intel 80486 Pipelining
• Fetch
— From cache or external memory
— Put in one of two 16-byte prefetch buffers
— Fill buffer with new data as soon as old data consumed
— Average 5 instructions fetched per load
— Independent of other stages to keep buffers full
• Decode stage 1
— Opcode & address-mode info
— At most first 3 bytes of instruction
— Can direct D2 stage to get rest of instruction
• Decode stage 2
— Expand opcode into control signals
— Computation of complex address modes
• Execute
— ALU operations, cache access, register update
• Writeback
— Update registers & flags
— Results sent to cache & bus interface write buffers
80486 Instruction Pipeline Examples
Pentium 4 Registers
EFLAGS Register
Control Registers
MMX Register Mapping
• MMX uses several 64 bit data types
• Use 3 bit register address fields
—8 registers
• No MMX specific registers
—Aliasing to lower 64 bits of existing floating
point registers
Mapping of MMX Registers to
Floating-Point Registers
Pentium Interrupt Processing
• Interrupts
—Maskable
—Nonmaskable
• Exceptions
—Processor detected
—Programmed
• Interrupt vector table
—Each interrupt type assigned a number
—Index to vector table
—256 * 32 bit interrupt vectors
• 5 priority classes
ARM Attributes
• RISC
• Moderate array of uniform registers
— More than most CISC, less than many RISC
• Load/store model
— Operations perform on operands in registers only
• Uniform fixed-length instruction
— 32 bits standard set 16 bits Thumb
• Shift or rotation can preprocess source registers
— Separate ALU and shifter units
• Small number of addressing modes
— All load/store addressees from registers and instruction
fields
— No indirect or indexed addressing involving values in
memory
• Auto-increment and auto-decrement addressing
— Improve loops
• Conditional execution of instructions minimizes
conditional branches
Simplified ARM Organization
ARM Processor Organization
• Many variations depending on ARM version
• Data exchanged between processor and memory
through data bus
• Data item (load/store) or instruction (fetch)
• Instructions go through decoder before execution
• Pipeline and control signal generation in control
unit
• Data goes to register file
— Set of 32 bit registers
— Byte & halfword twos complement data sign extended
• Typically two source and one result register
• Rotation or shift before ALU
ARM Processor Modes
• User
• Privileged
—6 modes
– OS can tailor systems software use
– Some registers dedicated to each privileged mode
– Swifter context changes
• Exception
—5 of privileged modes
—Entered on given exceptions
—Substitute some registers for user registers
– Avoid corruption
Privileged Modes
• System Mode
— Not exception
— Uses same registers as User mode
— Can be interrupted by…
• Supervisor mode
— OS
— Software interrupt usedd to invoke operating system services
• Abort mode
— memory faults
• Undefined mode
— Attempt instruction that is not supported by integer core
coprocessors
• Fast interrupt mode
— Interrupt signal from designated fast interrupt source
— Fast interrupt cannot be interrupted
— May interrupt normal interrupt
• Interrupt mode
• Interrupt signal from any other interrupt source
 Modes

ARM Privileged modes

Register
Organization Exception modes

Table User System Supervisor Abort Undefined Interrupt Fast Interrupt

R0 R0 R0 R0 R0 R0 R0
R1 R1 R1 R1 R1 R1 R1
R2 R2 R2 R2 R2 R2 R2
R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3
R4 R4 R4 R4 R4 R4 R4
R5 R5 R5 R5 R5 R5 R5
R6 R6 R6 R6 R6 R6 R6
R7 R7 R7 R7 R7 R7 R7
R8 R8 R8 R8 R8 R8 R8_fiq
R9 R9 R9 R9 R9 R9 R9_fiq
R10 R10 R10 R10 R10 R10 R10_fiq
R11 R11 R11 R11 R11 R11 R11_fiq
R12 R12 R12 R12 R12 R12 R12_fiq
R13 (SP) R13 (SP) R13_svc R13_abt R13_und R13_irq R13_fiq
R14 (LR) R14 (LR) R14_svc R14_abt R14_und R14_irq R14_fiq
R15 (PC) R15 (PC) R15 (PC) R15 (PC) R15 (PC) R15 (PC) R15 (PC)
CPSR CPSR CPSR CPSR CPSR CPSR CPSR
SPSR_svc SPSR_abt SPSR_und SPSR_irq SPSR_fiq
ARM Register Organization
• 37 x 32-bit registers
• 31 general-purpose registers
—Some have special purposes
—E.g. program counters
• Six program status registers
• Registers in partially overlapping banks
—Processor mode determines bank
• 16 numbered registers and one or two
program status registers visible
General Register Usage
• R13 normally stack pointer (SP)
—Each exception mode has its own R13
• R14 link register (LR)
—Subroutine and exception mode return
address
• R15 program counter
CPSR
• CPSR process status register
—Exception modes have dedicated SPSR
• 16 msb are user flags
—Condition codes (N,Z,C,V)
—Q – overflow or saturation in some SMID
instructions
—J – Jazelle (8 bit) instructions
—GEE[3:0] SMID use [19:16] as greater than or
equal flag
• 16 lsb system flags for privilege modes
—E – endian
—Interrupt disable
—T – Normal or Thumb instruction
—Mode
ARM CPSR and SPSR
ARM Interrupt (Exception) Processing
• More than one exception allowed
• Seven types
• Execution forced from exception vectors
• Multiple exceptions handled in priority
order
• Processor halts execution after current
instruction
• Processor state preserved in SPSR for
exception
—Address of instruction about to execute put in
link register
—Return by moving SPSR to CPSR and R14 to
Foreground Reading
• Processor examples
• Stallings Chapter 12
• Manufacturer web sites & specs