CISC 3593

Computer Organization

Final Exam Format + Topics

Final Exam Format

+ Final Exam Format

●     Two hour exam

○    All ODS time accommodations will be upheld - make sure to schedule your exam with them if you need the time!

●     Combination offill in the blank, short answer questions, and direct application of material that we have covered in class - think the HWs.

●     Questions will be focused on material from after the midterm exam.

+ Final Exam Format

●     While the exam is primarily closed book, there are a few resources that you are allowed to use:

1.    Calculator

2.    Scratch Paper

3.    MIPS Green Sheet

4.    MIPS System Calls Sheet

●    A Binary/Decimal/Hex chart will also be provided.

Final Exam Topics to Study

+ Pre-Midterm Material

●     This exam will focus exclusively on material from after the midterm exam. This is not a cumulative exam.

●     However, since we use hex/binary/decimal conversion for MIPS

instruction decoding, you should review that material if you found it difficult during class/homework.

+ MIPS Assembly Language

●     MIPS instructions are woven throughout the topics of the exam, such as in instruction decoding and in the data path questions.

●     Know how to go from MIPS to C++ (by hand)

○ Writing a RAT to map variables to registers used

○ Arithmetic operations and their results

○ Boolean logic in MIPS vs C++

○ Identifying if/else vs loops

○ Arrays in MIPS - know how data is put into/taken out of them!

○ Knowing how to print out information and identifying its results

○ Writing the equivalent of MIPS code in C++ code

+ MIPS Instruction Decoding

●     Hex to Binary/Decimal

●     Identifying instruction formats

●     Using the Green Sheet to identify instructions

●     Register Numbers, Shift Amount, Immediates

●     Questions on this topic will be very similar to HW 6.

+ Computer Processor

●    Datapath (akin to class examples)

○ Identify which portions ofthe system are used

○ Know what goes through each portion for each instruction

○ Given an instruction, draw the data path (charts will be provided)

●    The role of the clock in the computer system.

●    von Neumann Bottleneck

●    Instruction Pipelining

Components Affecting

Computer Performance

●     Multiprocessor vs Multicore Systems

●     Main vs Secondary Memory (and their relative speed)

●     Caching

●     Memory Management Unit

●     Virtual Memory and its Benefits

●     Pages, Page Table, Translation Lookaside Buffer