Manish Kulkarni Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849 mmk0002@auburn.

edu

4/28/2008

Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

Overview
y What is CISC and Why to learn? y History y Architecture
y Typical x86 design y Characteristics & Addressing modes

y CISC Vs RISC
y Example Programs

y The Performance Equation y FAQs y Recent Developments & Future Scope y Resources y Questions
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What is CISC?
y Definition: Pronounced "sisk" and standing for Complex Instruction Set Computer, is a Microprocessor Architecture that aims at achieving complex operations with single instructions and favors the richness of the instruction set (typically as many as 200 unique instructions) over the speed with which individual instructions are executed.

Why should I know about CISC?

y Today s computers still use processors which are based on CISC designs y It has been a prominent architecture since 1978 y Most Emerging Processor designs combine features of CISC and RISC to create better designs.
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History
Generation 1 (IA-16) 2 First introduced 1978 1982 Prominent Consumer CPU linear / physical address brands space Intel 8086, Intel 8088 Intel 80186, Intel 80188, NEC V20 Intel 80286 Intel386, AMD Am386 Notable (new) features 16-bit / 20-bit (segmented) first x86 microprocessors see above hardware for fast address calculations, fast mul/div etc

2 3 (IA-32)

1982 1985

16-bit (30-bit virtual) / 24- MMU, for protected mode bit (segmented) and a larger address space 32-bit (46-bit virtual) / 32- 32-bit instruction set, bit MMU with paging see above RISC-like pipelining, integrated FPU, on-chip cache superscalar, 64-bit databus, faster FPU, MMX register renaming, speculative execution

1989

Intel486

5 5/6

1993 1996

Pentium, Pentium MMX Cyrix 6x86, Cyrix MII

see above see above

1995

Pentium Pro, AMD K5

-op translation, PAE (not see above / 36-bit physical K5), integrated L2 cache (PAE) (not K5)
Continued .

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Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

Continued .

Generation 6 7

First introduced 1997 1999

Prominent Consumer CPU linear / physical address brands space AMD K6/-2/3, Pentium see above II/III Athlon, Athlon XP see above

Notable (new) features L3-cache support, 3D Now, SSE superscalar FPU, wide design (up to three x86 instr./clock) deeply pipelined, high frequency, SSE2, hyperthreading optimized for low power x86-64 instruction set, ondie memory controller very deeply pipelined, very high frequency, SSE3 low power, multi-core, lower clock frequency monolithic quad-core, 128 bit FPUs, SSE4a Hyper Transport 3, native memory controller, on-die L3 cache

7 6/7-M 8 (x86-64) 8 9

2000 2003 2003 2004 2006

Pentium 4 Pentium M Athlon 64 Prescott Intel Core, Intel Core 2

see above see above 64-bit / 40-bit physical in first impl. see above see above (some are 32bit only)

10

2007-2008

AMD Phenom

see above

4/28/2008

Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

Architecture
A typical x86 Architecture

Intel 8086 Architecture, the 1st member of x86 family

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Characteristics
o o o o CISC are Mostly Von Neumann Architecture (There are few exceptions) Same bus for program memory, data memory, I/O, registers, etc Generally Micro-coded ,Variable length instructions Segmentation is possible with Segment Register s like DS, ES and an offset which can be common to all segments. o Many powerful instructions are supported, making the assembly language programmer s job much easier. o Physical Memory Extension Possible

Addressing modes
o o o o o o o Register Addressing Mode Memory Addressing Modes Displacement Only Addressing Mode Register Indirect Addressing Modes Indexed Addressing Modes Based Indexed Addressing Modes Based Indexed Plus Displacement Addressing
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CISC Vs RISC
Example Program
Main Memory

General Purpose Registers

ALU

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Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

Consider following task of Multiplication

15

20

Operands: M[2:3] = operand 1 (15) M[5:2] = operand 2(20) Task : Multiplication Result: M[2:3] <= result
Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

4/28/2008

The CISC Approach

y Instruction : y Operations: 1.

MULT 2:3, 5:2

2. 3. 4.

Loads the two operands into separate registers Multiplies the operands in the execution unit Then stores the product in the some temporary register Stores value back to memory location 2:3

MULT is what is known as a "complex instruction." Operates directly on the computer's memory banks Does not require the programmer to explicitly call any loading or storing functions. closely resembles a command in a higher level language. e.g. a C statement "a = a * b."
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The RISC Approach

y Instructions : y Operations: 1.

LW LW MULT SW

A, 2:3 B, 5:2 A, B 2:3, A

2. 3. 4.

Load operand1 into register A Load operand2 into register B Multiply the operands in the execution unit and store result in A Store value of A back to memory location 2:3

These set of Instructions is known as a Reduced Instructions." Cannot Operate directly on the computer's memory banks Requires the programmer to explicitly call any loading or storing functions. RISC processors only use simple instructions that can be executed within one clock cycle

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CISC
y Primary goal is to complete a

RISC
y Primary goal is to speedup

y y y

y y y

task in as few lines of assembly as possible Emphasis on hardware Includes multi-clock complex instructions Memory-to-memory: "LOAD" and "STORE" incorporated in instructions Small code sizes High cycles per second Variable length Instructions

individual instruction

y Emphasis on software y Single-clock, y

y y y

reduced instruction only Register to register: "LOAD" and "STORE" are independent instructions Large code sizes Low cycles per second Equal length instructions which make pipelining possible
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Computer Architecture & Design (6200) Class Presentation

The Performance Equation

The following equation is commonly used for expressing a computer's performance ability:

1 The CISC approach minimizes the number of instructions per program (2) sacrificing the number of cycles per instruction. (1) RISC does the opposite reduces the cycles per instruction (1) sacrificing number of instructions per program (2)
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FAQs
Which one is faster?
Well, it is commonly accepted that RISC ISA's should make computers faster. The main reason why is because RISC computers figure out more words in a shorter amount of time due to pipelining.

So why isn't my computer a RISC?

CISC ISA's were implemented in the first personal computers With more people buying computers, CISC isa's became more prominent Software (especially OS) was developed and "translated" so that personal computers speaking x86 would be able to interact with its users Because there was so much software written for computers "speaking" x86, people continued to buy those computers. If we tried to switch to another ISA, we would not have all of the software choices we have now.
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So why would someone want to develop another ISA?

x86 (and CISC) make poor use of the faster hardware we have now. Another problem with x86 is that people have been trying to make it faster for a long time, at least 20 years, and after a while you have found most of the ways to speed the computer up significantly

Why don't we just switch to RISC?

Although it is not used on your desktop PC, RISC ISA's are implemented in many mainframe computers. Programmers have been trying to make RISC faster for a long time, and they have found many of the areas in which it is able to be sped up significantly.

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Where are we running into problems speeding up RISC and CISC?

We are running into problems with speeding up the computer in 2 areas 1. Branching Decisions and predictions consume good amount of processing time 2. Access to memory to fetch instruction and data

So What we are going to do?

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Recent Developments & Future Scope

o The terms RISC and CISC have become less meaningful with the continued evolution of both CISC and RISC designs and implementations. o Modern x86 processors also decode and split more complex instructions into a series of smaller internal "micro-operations" which can thereby be executed in a pipelined (parallel) fashion, thus achieving high performance on a much larger subset of instructions. o Attempts have been made to combine features of both RISC and CISC to develop a new approach o Intel has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard to design a new type of ISA. They are calling it IA-64 (Intel Architecture 64)
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IA-64
What is IA-64?
IA-64 is a new instruction set architecture. IA-64 seeks to address: branch delays and memory latency.

What main principles is IA-64 designed around?

IA-64 seeks to exploit instruction level parallelism to the highest degree. Intel and HP have called their method of exploiting this parallelism in IA-64 EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing). EPIC simulates parallelism by having the compiler find what instructions can be executed in parallel and "explicitly" package them for the CPU.

How does IA-64 help with branch delays?

IA-64 takes a unique approach of prediction to reduce the consequences of branch delays. The compiler can append a predicate to any instruction it chooses. The compiler will append predicates to instructions that depend on the outcome of a branch in order to help reduce branch penalties.
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How does IA-64 deal with memory latency issues?

Memory latency occurs because CPU processing speed is significantly faster than the speed of fetching data from memory. IA-64 suggests a new way to eliminate some memory latency problems, speculative loading.

IA-64 Realities:
"A study in ISCA '95 by S. Malhlke, et. al. demonstrated that predication removed over 50% of the branches and 40% of the mis-predicted branches from several popular benchmark programs." ( http://www.hp.com/esy/technology/ia_64/products/isapress.html ) IA-64 lack compatibility with Intel x86 and HP PA-RISC architectures, so this additional compatibility logic will take lot of die space. Presently, the compilers are in experiment phase and IA-64 has no OS support.

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Resources
o http://www.pctechguide.com/glossary/WordFind.php?wordInput=CISC o http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2001/cmsc411/projects/IA64/ o http://cse.stanford.edu/class/sophomore-college/projects00/risc/risccisc/index.html o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_instruction_set_computer o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 o http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-6.html

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Questions ??

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