Computer Organization and Architecture, unit: Pipelining. Core concepts, terminology, and worked-example cues a college student meets for this unit, building on prior units without repeating them. Front: a term, concept, or short problem cue. Back: the definition, explanation, or answer.
About this set
38 basic cards for College Computer Science. Set 6 of 8 in Computer Organization and Architecture. It opens with "What is pipelining, in CPU design?" and "What is the main benefit of instruction pipelining?". Study it alongside the other College sets below.
38 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- What is pipelining, in CPU design?
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Overlapping the execution stages of multiple instructions to improve throughput- What is the main benefit of instruction pipelining?
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Increased instruction throughput by processing multiple instructions simultaneously in different stages- What is a pipeline stage?
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One step in the instruction execution process, such as fetch, decode, or execute- What is a pipeline hazard?
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A situation that prevents the next instruction from executing in its designated clock cycle- What is a structural hazard?
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A pipeline conflict caused by limited hardware resources needed by multiple instructions simultaneously- What is a data hazard?
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A pipeline conflict where an instruction depends on the result of a prior instruction not yet completed- What is a control hazard?
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A pipeline conflict caused by branch instructions that change the flow of execution- What is pipeline stalling?
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Pausing pipeline execution temporarily to resolve a hazard- What is forwarding (data bypassing) used for in pipelines?
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Passing a computed result directly to a dependent instruction before it is formally stored- What is branch prediction?
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Guessing the outcome of a conditional branch in advance to keep the pipeline full- What happens on a branch misprediction?
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Instructions fetched based on the wrong guess must be discarded and the pipeline restarted- What is pipeline depth?
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The number of stages an instruction passes through in the pipeline- What is superscalar execution?
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A CPU design that issues multiple instructions per clock cycle using multiple execution units- What is out-of-order execution?
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Executing instructions in an order different from the program order to avoid stalls- What is instruction-level parallelism?
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The degree to which instructions in a program can be executed simultaneously
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