Microprocessors Systems:
Solutions manual to selected
exercises
Mile Stojcev, Tatjana Stankovic
2075
Microprocessor systems
Directions:
- Electronics,
- Communications,
- Microelectronics
VII semester 2+2+1
VIII semester 2+2+1
2075
Microprocessor systems
There are probably almost as many different curricula and
syllabi for microprocessor system design as there are
schools and instructors in which the subject is taught.
The proposed course is suitable for an introduction on
microprocessor system design at the junior or senior
level, or at an advanced sophomore level.
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Microprocessor systems
Goal of the course:
Microprocessor systems are extremely complex systems
consisting of many components whose operation depends
on many factors.
In order to understand microprocessor systems it is essential
that a student should be exposed to the concept of levels
in computer architecture. It allows them to see how various
parts of the microprocessor system fit into one whole.
At the beginning of the course the concept of levels are
presented to students.
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Microprocessor systems
Goal of the course (continued):
The students then have a context in which to place various
topics as they progress through the course.
The course attempts to provide a balanced view of all
important elements of microprocessor system design.
It is organized so that all the relevant topics are covered at
some medium essential level of detail.
Additional material is provided to students, in order to
overcome certain topics in greater depth.
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Microprocessor systems
Needed prerequisites:
On assume that the student had at least an introductory course in some:
High-level programming language such as C, Java, or Pascal,
One/two semesters of digital logic design.
Many students who have taken a course in digital logic design need to
renovate the knowledge concerning synthesis of:
FSMs,
PLDs (CPLDs & FPGAs), and
VHDL as a tool for designing, implementing, and testing complex
systems.
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Microprocessor systems
Organization:
We have organized a course so that all relevant topics are
covered in two semesters with a fund of 2+2+1.
The complete course is composed of:
a) 60 classes of teaching; 30 classes per semester, two
classes per week
b) 60 classes of oral exercises and working in projects; 30
classes per semester, two classes per week
c) 30 classes of lab exercises; 15 classes per semester,
one class per week.
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Microprocessor systems
Required course material:
1) RISC, CISC and DSP processors
Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis, 1997.
Mile Stojcev
2) Architectures and Programming of Microcomputer Systems Based on
IA32
Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis, 2000.
Mile Stojcev, Branislav Petrovic
3) Solution Manual to accompany Microprocessor and Microcomputer
Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis, 1999.
Mile Stojcev, Sasa Ristic, Milos Krstic
4) Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis, 2003.
Mile Stojcev, Tatjana Stankovic
2075
Microprocessor systems
Evolution of microprocessor systems:
- Earlier generations of microprocessors had almost trivial
internal structure.
- Present designs contain multiple pipelined functional unit
with support for multiple processor and memories.
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Microprocessor systems
Evolution of microprocessor systems (continued):
The appropriate topics for such a course have changed
considerably in recent years.
The topics of:
- pipelined processor design,
- the memory hierarchy, and
- networks
are moving to the center stage in the arena of microprocessor
system design.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics:
Quantitative performance evaluations at both the component
and system level, where:
- total time to execute a program,
- silicon area,
- or other hardware/software tradeoffs
are considered as dominant performance measures.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of a microprocessor is
involved.
The tasks that microprocessor performs are determined.
Instructions, internal registers, and other ISA components
are specified.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Register-Transfer-Level (RTL) treatment of the
implementation of instruction fetching and execution in a
processor is considered.
This is followed by a discussion of processor implementation
by both hardwired and microprogrammed approaches.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Memory system is treated.
Caches and multiple module memory systems are explained
as ways for increasing main memory bandwidth.
Caches are discussed in some details including performance
modeling.
Virtual memory systems and memory management are also
presented.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
A detailed coverage of the use of pipelining in the design of
high-performance microprocessors is presented.
The role of the compiler and the relationship between
pipelined execution and instruction set design are
explored.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Instruction-Level-Parallelism (ILP) is considered.
The basics of superscalar and VLIW instruction processing by
the utilization of multiple functional units are also treated.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Input/Output organization is considered.
The basics of I/O data transfer synchronization are presented.
Interrupts and direct-memory access methods are explained,
including a discussion of the role of software interrupts in
operating systems.
Bus protocols and standards are also presented.
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Microprocessor systems
Main topics (continued):
Communication cover network architectures, focusing on:
- modems,
- local area networks (LANs),
- wide area networks (WANs).
The emphasis is primarily on network architecture, with
accessible discussions of protocols that spotlight key
feature of network architecture.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
contains 371 plus VII text pages of the B5 format, prepared on PC
machine intended for printing.
Structure:
The book is divided into four Chapters, section Bibliography with
46 cited references, and one Appendix.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected
exercises
Chapter 1 – Written part of the exam tests
Exam exercises in the time period from January ’99 until
June ’03 are presented.
In total there are:
- 40 examination periods
- 160 solved problems on 150 pages, including 52
pictures and number of tables and short program
sequences.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Written part of the exam tests – Layout
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises Written part of the exam tests - Layout (cont.)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
- Written part of the exam tests - Layout (cont.)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
- Written part of the exam tests - Layout (cont.)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
- Written part of the exam tests - Layout (cont.)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises Written part of the exam tests – Criteria for evaluation
- Each exam consists of four problems.
- All problems are pointed equally.
- Maximal number of points 100.
- Minimal number of points to pass the written part of the exam test is
50 points.
- Criteria for pointing problems:
- correct answer 25 points
- correct answer but error in computing/program presentation 20 points
- correct idea and concept well defined, only, 15 points
- correct idea but non optimal hardware-software solution 10 points
- correct idea but badly documented 5 points.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 2 – Selected problem
Collection of distinctive problems from the field of computer architecture
and organization.
Hot topics refer to RISC processors, pipelining, superscalar, VLIW
concepts, ILP cash memory, etc.
In total there are:
- 76 pages
- 107 problems illustrated by 41 figures, a great number of tables and
short program sequences.
The aim of the presented problems, is to, in an indirect way, bring closer
and explain contemporary concepts of processing instructions.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 2 – Selected problem - Typical problem
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 2 – Selected problem - Typical problem – (cont.)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 2 – Selected problem - Typical problem
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 2 – Selected problem - Typical problem (solution)
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 3 – Oral part of the exam
- 16 sets of questions
- totally 150 questions, presented on 14 pages
- the writing part consists of 10 questions selected from different topics
- criteria for evaluation
- a correct answer to the question ……….. 1 point
- incomplete correct answer ………………. 0.7 point
- presentation of the main idea …………… 0.5 point
- partially correct answer ………………….. 0.3 point
- no answer ………………………………… -0.3 point
- incorrect answer …………………………. -0.5 point
- maximal number of points ……………… 10 points
- minimal number of points for pass ……… 5 points
- final number of points is determined as arithmetic means of the written
and oral parts of the exam.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 3 - Oral part of the exam - Layout of a typical set
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Describes the differences between a trap instruction and a
subroutine call.
Concerning disc, define the terms seek time, rotational delay, access
time, and transfer time.
What is the difference between DRAM and SRAM in terms of
characteristic such as speed, size, and cost?
What is the distinction between spatial locality and temporal locality?
What are the typical elements of a machine instruction?
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 3 - Oral part of the exam - Layout of a typical set (cont.)
6)
What is the distinction between instruction level parallelism and
machine parallelism?
7)
What is the difference between a hardware pipeline and a software
pipeline?
8)
What is the difference between horizontal microinstruction and
vertical microinstruction?
9)
Briefly define indirect addressing.
10) What are the advantages of the geometric mean over the harmonic
and arithmetic means when combining normalized execution rates?
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 4 – Selected test problems
- 555 different selected test problems
- given in 119 pages
- depending on how a problem difficult is, the questions are divided into
three groups:
- standard questions, devoted to everyone, are not marked
- questions which the students should know if they want to get a
higher mark (>8) are marked with one asterisk
- difficult questions, intended for graduate students, are marked
with two asterisks.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected
exercises
Chapter 4 – Selected test problems - Layout of standard
questions
- What types of locations can hold source and destination
operands?
- What is a difference between big endian and little endian?
- What general roles are performed by CPU registers?
- What is a program status word?
- Give a simple definition of precise interrupts/exceptions?
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected exercises
Chapter 4 – Selected test problems - Layout of questions marked with one
asterisk
-

Define the crucial differences between microcontrollers and
microprocessors?
Explain the differences among the following program defined
exceptions:
a) illegal instruction
b) non-implemented instruction
c) privileged instruction
d) arithmetic error.
For the example of a conditional jump statement
if C then I1 else I2
explain the concepts of branch prediction and speculative execution.
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Microprocessor systems
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected
exercises
Chapter 4 – Selected test problems - Layout of questions
marked with two asterisks
-
-
Define the basic characteristics of the following benchmark programs:
Dhrystone, Whetstone, Livermore Loops, and Linpack.
Define briefly what kind of relationship exists between the sequential
model of execution and the precise processor state.
What kind of similar and conceptually different activities perform the
linker and loader?
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Microprocessor systems
As conclusion
Microprocessors Systems: Solutions manual to selected
exercises, by M. Stojcev and T. Stankovic,
published by Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis 2004.
contains a collection of problems and theoretical questions,
useful to students for preparing the major Microprocessor
systems exams, and at the same time shows new trends of
development in the field of computer architecture.
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Microprocessor systems
Thanks to all for stated attention and patience
to follow this presentation!