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§5.5
Your friends at
(Creative Computer Corporation) have determined that the critical
path that sets the clock cycle length of the multicycle datapath is
memory access for loads and stores (not for fetching instructions).
This has caused their newest implementation of the MIPS 30000 to run
at a clock rate of 4.8 GHz rather than the target clock rate of 5.6
GHz. However, Clara at
has a solution. If all the
cycles that access data memory are broken into two clock cycles,
then the machine can run at its target clock rate. (On the FSM diagram,
each node corresponding to a data memory access becomes two nodes
with the same set of outputs, with one node transitioning to the
next before continuing to the next operation.)
Assume the following mix of instruction types: load 26%, store
10%, register-register 49%, branch/jump 15%. Determine how much
faster the 5.6 GHz machine with the two-cycle memory accesses is
compared with the 4.8 GHz machine with the single-cycle memory
accesses.
Suppose that splitting the instruction fetch step into two cycles
would allow a further increase of the clock speed to 6.4 GHz. Would
this increase the performance of the machine even further, and if so
by how much?