Midterm projects

in advanced topics in digital systems  2004


1)  study the given stack processor and suggest a way to improve performance of the instruction call/ret, i.e. to reduce the number of cycle required for the instructions.

2)  design pipeline for S2 processor.  measure the speedup by running a benchmark program of your choice.

3)  design a superscalar version of S2 that has 2 ALUs.  measure the speedup by running a benchmark program of your choice.

4)  implement a branch predictor for S2 processor.  measure the speedup by running a benchmark program of your choice.

5)  write a microprogram for implementing an integer multiply instruction for S1.  Use Booth's algorithm to multiply two 16-bit numbers.  The difficulty is in performing 32-bit operation.  You are allow to add some necessary functional unit.

6)  write a microprogram for implementing a character search instruction for S1.  Model your instruction similar to Intel based processor.  measure its effectiveness by comparing a string search program that use and not-use this instruction.

More details will be updated on the course-page.

20 August 2004
P. Chongstitvatana