CS61C, Spring 2006
Important Topics for Midterm 2
- Representation of positive and negative fractions
- Management of the binary point in Fixed point arithmetic operations
- Concept of FP and relationship to scientific notation
- Normalization
- Details of basic IEEE 754 (meaning of fields)
- Special "numbers" in IEEE 754
- Denormalized numbers
- Rounding modes
- Bit pattern of floating point representation
- Conversion among floating point, fixed point, bit pattern
- Hand conversion from binary MIPS machine language to assembly language
- Assembler, basic functions:
- neumonic conversion, pseudo-instruction expansion, symbol resolution
- Basic concept of object file format
- Operation of the Linker
- Representation of digital signals as waveforms
- Concept of propagation delay through circuit elements
- Operation of flip-flops/registers
- basics of edge-triggering, setup time, clock-to-q delay
- Combining registers with CL and register transfer operations
- Pipelining of CL
- FSMs as SDSs
- Concept and analysis of critical path in SDS
- Three views of combinational logic:
- gate diagrams, truth tables(TT), boolean expressions
- TT to SOP canonical form
- expressions to TT
- simple algebraic manipulation
- expressions to gates and vis versa
- Multiplexors
- ALU design
- Ripple adder design with subtract option and overflow detect
- Major stages of execution
- single- versus multi-cycle concept
- Step by step design procedure
- Structure of datapath and relationship to instruction execution
- Concept and analysis of critical path
- Controller design
- Determination of controller table of operations, equations and circuits.
- Concept and pros/cons of pipelining
- Application to single-cycle CPU
- Types of hazards
- Techniques for coping with hazards
- logic reorganization, branch delay slots, forwarding
- load delay slots, interlocking
- Running programs on a pipelined processor.