4.1.3 - The Challenge of Control Flow
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Practice Questions
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What is a branch instruction?
💡 Hint: Think of examples like if statements or loops.
What happens during a control hazard?
💡 Hint: How does this affect processing efficiency?
4 more questions available
Interactive Quizzes
Quick quizzes to reinforce your learning
What is the main problem caused by branch instructions in pipelined architectures?
💡 Hint: Think about how the next instruction depends on the branch.
True or False: Control hazards can lead to pipeline stalls.
💡 Hint: What happens when the outcome of a branch is not immediately available?
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Challenge Problems
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Describe how multiple branches can compound control hazards in a complex instruction sequence. What could be a potential architectural improvement to mitigate this?
💡 Hint: Think about how processors learn from past decisions to handle future predictions.
Consider a deep pipeline with many stages. How would you analyze the performance impact of a 10-cycle delay due to a control hazard? What solutions would you propose?
💡 Hint: Consider techniques that allow predictive fetching to reduce idle time in the pipeline.
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