Introduction to Systems Approach
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Questions and Answers

What are the two main functions of the Emotion Engine?

Behavior simulation and geometry translation

What does the term 'architecture' denote in computer systems?

The operational structure and the user's view of the system

What are the three essential components of the Sony PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine?

A main RISC processor, two vector processing units (VPU0 and VPU1)

The implementation of a processor is known as microarchitecture?

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does an SOC system typically include?

<p>A number of heterogeneous processors interconnected to one or more memory elements, possibly including analog circuitry and reconfigurable logic</p> Signup and view all the answers

The [BLANK] is an example of a system-on-chip used in a smart phone.

<p>SOC</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is NOT a technology used to improve performance in modern processors?

<p>Sequential execution (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the main difference between ASICs and software implementations?

<p>ASICs offer higher performance but lower flexibility and programmability. (B), ASICs require higher development costs than software implementations. (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two main types of processors that exploit ILP?

<p>Superscalar and VLIW processors</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which type of processor relies on static analysis performed by the compiler to schedule instructions?

<p>VLIW (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two main types of SIMD processors?

<p>Array processors and vector processors</p> Signup and view all the answers

Array processors consist of interconnected processor elements, each having its own local memory space?

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary difference between array processors and vector processors?

<p>An array processor consists of a network of processor elements while a vector processor consists of a single processor with special function units for operating on vectors</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are two key characteristics of an application suitable for use on an array processor?

<p>Significant amount of data with a regular structure, computations that are uniformly applied to many or all elements of the data set</p> Signup and view all the answers

Vector processors are designed to work on vectors only.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are two key features of vector processors?

<p>Deeply pipelined function units with high clock rates, support for result bypassing through chaining</p> Signup and view all the answers

Multiprocessors consist of multiple identical processors.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two main problems associated with shared memory in multiprocessor systems?

<p>Maintaining memory consistency across processors, ensuring cache coherency</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two key ideas in a design process?

<p>Figuring out requirements and specifications, iterating through design stages to ensure a solution is efficient and effective</p> Signup and view all the answers

System requirements are typically concise and definitive.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does the term 'design iteration' mean?

<p>Continuously refining a design based on initial specifications and evaluating its performance against desired criteria</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two key aspects that an initial design should prioritize?

<p>Meeting the key requirements, addressing high-priority real-time constraints</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two key goals of an optimized design?

<p>Minimize cost and power consumption, while ensuring the design meets all the specifications and requirements</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two main factors that determine the performance of a system?

<p>Organization and size of processors and memories, the clock rate at which they operate</p> Signup and view all the answers

The basic cycle time of a processor is the same for all instructions.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Pipelining is an advanced technique used to improve processor performance.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the main goal of optimizing a pipeline?

<p>To find the right number of segments to balance performance and overhead</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are two main factors that affect clock rate advances in modern processors?

<p>Reduced overhead associated with pipeline segments, increased number of segments in pipelines</p> Signup and view all the answers

The size of the underlying processor is more important than the efficiency of the cache memory system in achieving performance?

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the main goal of a good processor design?

<p>To achieve an optimal cost-performance trade-off for a specific performance target</p> Signup and view all the answers

Defects in silicon wafers can significantly impact the yield of chip production.

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the general relationship between die area and yield?

<p>The relationship between die area and yield is inverse; as die area increases, yield generally decreases</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the key principle used to evaluate the addition of a particular component or feature to a design?

<p>The principle of marginal utility</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the two main factors considered in designing systems to optimize area use and cost?

<p>The absence of pinout information and constantly shifting photolithography</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the main purpose of the register bit equivalent (rbe) unit?

<p>To represent the primary architectural trade-offs in a design by providing a standardized measurement of area</p> Signup and view all the answers

Yield can be significantly affected by the maturity of the manufacturing process?

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the general relationship between feature size and transistor density?

<p>Transistor density scales as the square of the feature size</p> Signup and view all the answers

The area of a register file is determined by the number of registers, ports, and bits per register?

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

The size of the cache does not significantly affect system performance.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Increasing the clock rate always results in improved performance?

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Decreasing the size of pipeline segments always leads to better performance.

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is NOT a factor that can contribute to pipeline disruption?

<p>Clock skew adjustments (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the five key design trade-offs discussed in the chapter, and how do they relate to SOC design?

<p>Time, area, power, reliability, and configurability. These trade-offs are crucial in SOC design as they affect the overall cost, performance, efficiency, and robustness of a system-on-chip.</p> Signup and view all the answers

High-performance systems prioritize cost and power optimization over time optimization?

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Wearable systems prioritize low power and low cost over high performance?

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Embedded systems prioritize performance over reliability and design lifetime?

<p>False (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Gaming systems prioritize cost over performance?

<p>True (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are three key principles that SOC designers should consider during the design process?

<p>Understand the specific requirements for the system and prioritize the trade-offs accordingly, translate those requirements into specifications to guide the design efficiently, and utilize design iterations to refine and optimize the design based on feedback and analysis.</p> Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Introduction to the Systems Approach

  • The past 40 years have seen significant advances in silicon technology, leading to increased transistor density and performance.
  • In 1966, Fairchild introduced a quad two-input NAND gate with approximately 10 transistors.
  • In 2008, Intel's quad-core Itanium processor had 2 billion transistors.
  • Transistor density has continuously improved, leading to a decrease in device cost.
  • The aim of the book is to present an approach for computer system design that leverages advancements in transistor density.
  • The approach builds upon previous studies in computer architecture and design, but it also delves into system architecture and design.
  • The concept of systems engineering is introduced. It was developed in response to the increasing complexity of engineering problems in large-scale systems.
  • A system-on-chip (SOC) is a complex architecture integrating various components, including processors, memories, and interconnects, tailored to a specific application.
  • The Sony PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine is given as a simple example of an SOC architecture.
  • This example contains a main processor (RISC style) and two vector processing units (VPUs) with four parallel processors each (SIMD style).
  • The book will explore the components before returning to the issue of system architecture.

Components of the System

  • System architecture defines the operational structure and the user's view of the system, including the functional specification and hardware implementation.
  • The system architecture details system-level building blocks such as processors and memories, and the interconnection between them.

Processor Architectures

  • Processors are characterized by their application and/or architecture.
  • Processor examples include GPUs, DSPs, media processors, and network processors.
  • Architectures such as SIMD, vector (VP), VLIW, and superscalar are categorized by their architecture or functionality.

Hardware and Software

  • The fundamental decision in SOC design involves deciding which components are implemented in either hardware or software.
  • Software implementations run on general-purpose processors which interpret instructions. This method is flexible but slower than dedicated hardware implementations.
  • Hardware implementations, on the other hand, are faster and require less overhead of instruction fetching and decoding, but often lack programmability and more costly.
  • SOC designs aim to combine the benefits of both for optimized performance.

Processor Architectures (continued)

  • Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA) includes logic blocks that process data.
  • Structured ASICs allow for application customization before fabrication.
  • Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) have fixed hardware architectures optimized for digital signal processing tasks.

Simple Sequential Processor

  • Sequential processors execute instructions sequentially from the instruction stream.
  • Instructions are executed sequentially to produce the desired result in a predefined order.
  • Stages include fetching, decoding, generating the memory address, fetching operands, executing the operation, and writing back the result.

Pipelined Processor

  • A pipelined processor overlaps the execution of multiple instructions. This process allows for multiple operations concurrently, thus increasing throughput.
  • This process may include instruction fetch, decode, execution, etc, which are often performed simultaneously to maximize efficiency.
  • A pipeline's stages are essential for completing one operation before the next operation begins.

Superscalar Processors

  • Superscalar processors, unlike sequential processors, are designed to handle multiple instructions simultaneously.
  • They use dynamic mechanisms to determine which operations can run in parallel, achieving a higher execution rate.

VLIW Processors

  • VLIW processors rely on compilers to determine which operations can run in parallel, reducing the processor's complexity compared to Superscalar processors
  • Instructions in VLIW processors contain multiple independent operations.
  • They can achieve high performance from static scheduling, making them suitable for applications that are highly predictable.

Array Processors

  • These processors contain multiple interconnected processing elements (PEs)
  • Each PE has its own local memory and global memory space.
  • Data and instructions are distributed regularly among PE's

Vector Processors

  • Vector processors, similar to array processors, can operate on vectors, or sequences of data, as a single entity.
  • They contain pipeline units that process vectors with high clock rates compared to scalar processors.
  • These processors have special instructions and features for working efficiently on vectors for high performance.
  • The handling of values between the vector register file and the main memory is performed concurrently to maximize throughput.
  • These processors use techniques like "chaining," allowing computations to happen concurrently.

Multiprocessors

  • Multiprocessors consist of multiple processors that work together and are interconnected to share resources.

  • Data sharing and synchronization methods vary greatly depending on the architecture (distributed vs. shared memory). Multiprocessors are very complex

  • Shared memory architectures are more complex because of memory consistency and cache coherency issues

SOC Design Approach

  • Requirements and specifications are fundamental in system design.
  • The process begins with understanding the design requirements.
  • Different design stages are used: initial design and optimized design that iterate through steps.
  • Iterative steps to refine and optimize performance

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Description

Explore the advancements in silicon technology and their impact on computer system design over the last 40 years. This quiz covers the evolution of transistor density and the introduction of systems engineering concepts essential for modern architecture. Dive into the integration of components in system-on-chip designs.

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