Computer Science 220
Assembly Language & Computer Architecture

Fall 2010, Siena College

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Agenda

• RISC vs. CISC
  • Examples of some extreme CISC instructions
  • RISC characteristics
• Sun Sparc
  • Register Windows
  • Other SPARC features
• x86/IA-32
  • A brief look at a long history
  • ISA overview

Practice Questions

Please look at Exercise 2.38, parts 1b, 2b, and 3b, only. If you have questions about it, please ask any time! You may see a similar question on the final exam.

The problem is reproduced here for the benefit of those working without or with a different edition of the text.

The x86 instruction set includes the REP prefix that causes the instruction to be repeated a given number of times or until a condition is satisfied. The first three problems (the three you are to do) refer to the following x86 instruction:

b. REP MOVSD, which does the following:

Repeat until ECX is zero:
Mem32[EDI]=Mem32[ESI], EDI=EDI+4, ESI=ESI+4, ECX=ECX-1

2.38.1. What would be a typical use for this instruction?

2.38.2. Write MIPS code that performs the same operation, assuming that $a0 corresponds to ECX, $a1 to EDI, $a2 to ESI, and $a3 to EAX.

2.38.3. If the x86 instruction takes one cycle to read memory, one cycle to write memory, and one cycle for each register update, and if MIPS takes one cycle per instruction, what is the speed-up of using this x86 instruction instead of the equivalent MIPS code when ECX is very large? Assume that the clock cycle time for x86 and MIPS is the same.

Examples

• assembly