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  • The Beta is an example of a reduced-instruction-set

  • computer (RISC) architecture.

  • Reducedrefers to the fact that in the Beta ISA,

  • most instructions only access the internal registers

  • for their operands and destination.

  • Memory values are loaded and stored

  • using separate memory-access instructions, which

  • implement only a simple address calculation.

  • These reductions lead to smaller,

  • higher-performance hardware implementations and simpler

  • compilers on the software side.

  • The ARM and MIPS ISAs are other examples of RISC architectures.

  • Intel's x86 ISA is more complex.

  • There is a limited amount of storage inside of the CPU

  • using the language of sequential logic,

  • we'll refer to this as the CPU state.

  • There's a 32-bit program counter (PC for short) that holds

  • the address of the current instruction in main memory.

  • And there are thirty-two registers,

  • numbered 0 through 31.

  • Each register holds a 32-bit value.

  • We'll use use 5-bit fields in the instruction to specify

  • the number of the register to be used an operand or destination.

  • As shorthand, we'll refer to a register using the prefix “R”

  • followed by its number, e.g., “R0” refers to the register

  • selected by the 5-bit field 0b00000.

  • Register 31 (R31) is specialits value always reads as 0

  • and writes to R31 have no affect on its value.

  • The number of bits in each register

  • and hence the number of bits supported by ALU operations

  • is a fundamental parameter of the ISA.

  • The Beta is a 32-bit architecture.

  • Many modern computers are 64-bit architectures,

  • meaning they have 64-bit registers

  • and a 64-bit datapath.

  • Main memory is an array of 32-bit words.

  • Each word contains four 8-bit bytes.

  • The bytes are numbered 0 through 3,

  • with byte 0 corresponding to the low-order 7 bits

  • of the 32-bit value, and so on.

  • The Beta ISA only supports word accesses,

  • either loading or storing full 32-bit words.

  • Mostrealcomputers also support accesses to bytes

  • and half-words.

  • Even though the Beta only accesses full words, following

  • a convention used by many ISAs it uses byte addresses.

  • Since there are 4 bytes in each word,

  • consecutive words in memory have addresses that differ by 4.

  • So the first word in memory has address 0,

  • the second word address 4, and so on.

  • You can see the addresses to left of each memory location

  • in the diagram shown here.

  • Note that we'll usually use hexadecimal notation when

  • specifying addresses and other binary valuesthe “0x” prefix

  • indicates when a number is in hex.

  • When drawing a memory diagram, we'll follow the convention

  • that addresses increase as you read from top to bottom.

  • The Beta ISA supports 32-bit byte addressing,

  • so an address fits exactly into one 32-bit register or memory

  • location.

  • The maximum memory size is 2^32 bytes or 2^30 wordsthat's 4

  • gigabytes (4 GB) or one billion words of main memory.

  • Some Beta implementations might actually

  • have a smaller main memory, i.e.,

  • one with fewer than 1 billion locations.

  • Why have separate registers and main memory?

  • Well, modern programs and datasets are very large,

  • so we'll want to have a large main memory to hold everything.

  • But large memories are slow and usually only support access

  • to one location at a time, so they don't make good storage

  • for use in each instruction which needs to access several

  • operands and store a result.

  • If we used only one large storage array,

  • then an instruction would need to have three 32-bit addresses

  • to specify the two source operands and destinationeach

  • instruction encoding would be huge!

  • And the required memory accesses would have to be

  • one-after-the-other, really slowing down instruction

  • execution.

  • On the other hand, if we use registers to hold the operands

  • and serve as the destination, we can

  • design the register hardware for parallel access

  • and make it very fast.

  • To keep the speed up we won't be able to have very many

  • registers — a classic size-vs-speed performance

  • tradeoff we see in digital systems all the time.

  • In the end, the tradeoff leading to the best performance

  • is to have a small number of very fast registers used

  • by most instructions and a large but slow main memory.

  • So that's what the BETA ISA does.

  • In general, all program data will reside in main memory.

  • Each variable used by the programlivesin a specific

  • main memory location and so has a specific memory address.

  • For example, in the diagram below,

  • the value of variable “x” is stored in memory location

  • 0x1008, and the value of “y” is stored in memory location

  • 0x100C, and so on.

  • To perform a computation, e.g., to compute x*37 and store

  • the result in y, we would have to first load the value of x

  • into a register, say, R0.

  • Then we would have the datapath multiply the value in R0

  • by 37, storing the result back into R0.

  • Here we've assumed that the constant 37 is somehow

  • available to the datapath and doesn't itself need to be

  • loaded from memory.

  • Finally, we would write the updated value

  • in R0 back into memory at the location for y.

  • Whew!

  • A lot of steps

  • Of course, we could avoid all the

  • loading and storing if we chose to keep the values for x and y

  • in registers.

  • Since there are only 32 registers,

  • we can't do this for all of our variables,

  • but maybe we could arrange to load x and y into registers,

  • do all the required computations involving x and y by referring

  • to those registers, and then, when we're done,

  • store changes to x and y back into memory for later use.

  • Optimizing performance by keeping often-used values

  • in registers is a favorite trick of programmers and compiler

  • writers.

  • So the basic program template is some loads

  • to bring values into the registers, followed

  • by computation, followed by any necessary stores.

  • ISAs that use this template are usually referred

  • to asload-store architectures”.

The Beta is an example of a reduced-instruction-set

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