COMPUTER ORGANIZATION

MODULE 5: BASIC PROCESSING UNIT

SOME FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

• To execute an instruction, processor has to perform following 3 steps:
1) Fetch contents of memory-location pointed to by PC. Content of this location is an instruction
to be executed. The instructions are loaded into IR, Symbolically, this operation is written as:
IR [[PC]]
2) Increment PC by 4.
PC [PC] +4
3) Carry out the actions specified by instruction (in the IR).
• The first 2 steps are referred to as Fetch Phase.
Step 3 is referred to as Execution Phase.
• The operation specified by an instruction can be carried out by performing one or more of the
following actions:
1) Read the contents of a given memory-location and load them into a register.
2) Read data from one or more registers.
3) Perform an arithmetic or logic operation and place the result into a register.
4) Store data from a register into a given memory-location.
• The hardware-components needed to perform these actions are shown in Figure 5.1.

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SINGLE BUS ORGANIZATION
• ALU and all the registers are interconnected via a Single Common Bus (Figure 7.1).
• Data & address lines of the external memory-bus is connected to the internal processor-bus via MDR
& MAR respectively. (MDR Memory Data Register, MAR  Memory Address Register).
• MDR has 2 inputs and 2 outputs. Data may be loaded
→ into MDR either from memory-bus (external) or
→ from processor-bus (internal).
• MAR‟s input is connected to internal-bus;
MAR‟s output is connected to external-
bus.
• Instruction Decoder & Control Unit is responsible for
→ issuing the control-signals to all the units inside the processor.
→ implementing the actions specified by the instruction (loaded in the IR).
• Register R0 through R(n-1) are the Processor Registers.
The programmer can access these registers for general-purpose use.
• Only processor can access 3 registers Y, Z & Temp for temporary storage during program-execution.
The programmer cannot access these 3 registers.
• In ALU, 1) „A‟ input gets the operand from the output of the multiplexer (MUX).
2) „B‟ input gets the operand directly from the processor-bus.
• There are 2 options provided for „A‟ input of the ALU.
• MUX is used to select one of the 2 inputs.
• MUX selects either
→ output of Y or
→ constant-value 4( which is used to increment PC content).

• An instruction is executed by performing one or more of the following operations:

1) Transfer a word of data from one register to another or to the ALU.
2) Perform arithmetic or a logic operation and store the result in a register.
3) Fetch the contents of a given memory-location and load them into a register.
4) Store a word of data from a register into a given memory-location.
• Disadvantage: Only one data-word can be transferred over the bus in a clock cycle.
Solution: Provide multiple internal-paths. Multiple paths allow several data-transfers to take place in
parallel.

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REGISTER TRANSFERS
• Instruction execution involves a sequence of steps in which data are transferred from one register to
another.
• For each register, two control-signals are used: Riin & Riout. These are called Gating Signals.
• Riin=1  data on bus is loaded into Ri. Riout=1
 content of Ri is placed on bus.
Riout=0,  bus can be used for transferring data from other registers.
• For example, Move R1, R2; This transfers the contents of register R1 to register R2. This can be
accomplished as follows:
1) Enable the output of registers R1 by setting R1out to 1 (Figure 7.2).
This places the contents of R1 on processor-bus.
2) Enable the input of register R2 by setting R2out to 1.
This loads data from processor-bus into register R4.
• All operations and data transfers within the processor take place within time-periods defined by the
processor-clock.
• The control-signals that govern a particular transfer are asserted at the start of the clock cycle.

Input & Output Gating for one Register Bit

• A 2-input multiplexer is used to select the data applied to the input of an edge-triggered D flip-flop.
• Riin=1  mux selects data on bus. This data will be loaded into flip-flop at rising-edge of clock.
Riin=0  mux feeds back the value currently stored in flip-flop (Figure 7.3).
• Q output of flip-flop is connected to bus via a tri-state gate.
Riout=0  gate's output is in the high-impedance
state.

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Riout=1  the gate drives the bus to 0 or 1, depending on the value of Q.

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PERFORMING AN ARITHMETIC OR LOGIC OPERATION
• The ALU performs arithmetic operations on the 2 operands applied to its A and B inputs.
• One of the operands is output of MUX;
And, the other operand is obtained directly from processor-bus.
• The result (produced by the ALU) is stored temporarily in register Z.
• The sequence of operations for [R3][R1]+[R2] is as follows:
1) R1out, Yin
2) R2out, SelectY, Add, Zin
3) Zout, R3in
• Instruction execution proceeds as follows:
Step 1 --> Contents from register R1 are loaded into register Y.
Step2 --> Contents from Y and from register R2 are applied to the A and B inputs of ALU;
Addition is performed &
Result is stored in the Z register.
Step 3 --> The contents of Z register is stored in the R3 register.
• The signals are activated for the duration of the clock cycle corresponding to that step. All other
signals are inactive.

CONTROL-SIGNALS OF MDR
• The MDR register has 4 control-signals (Figure 7.4):
1) MDRin & MDRout control the connection to the internal processor data bus &
2) MDRinE & MDRoutE control the connection to the memory Data bus.
• MAR register has 2 control-signals.
1) MARin controls the connection to the internal processor address bus &
2) MARout controls the connection to the memory address bus.

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FETCHING A WORD FROM MEMORY
• To fetch instruction/data from memory, processor transfers required address to
MAR. At the same time, processor issues Read signal on control-lines of
memory-bus.
• When requested-data are received from memory, they are stored in MDR. From MDR, they are
transferred to other registers.
• The response time of each memory access varies (based on cache miss, memory-mapped I/O). To
accommodate this, MFC is used. (MFC  Memory Function Completed).
• MFC is a signal sent from addressed-device to the processor. MFC informs the processor that the
requested operation has been completed by addressed-device.
• Consider the instruction Move (R1),R2. The sequence of steps is (Figure 7.5):
1) R1out, MARin, Read ;desired address is loaded into MAR & Read command is issued.
2) MDRinE, WMFC ;load MDR from memory-bus & Wait for MFC response from memory.
3) MDRout, R2in ;load R2 from MDR.
where WMFC=control-signal that causes processor's control.
circuitry to wait for arrival of MFC signal.

Storing a Word in Memory

• Consider the instruction Move R2,(R1). This requires the following sequence:
1) R1out, MARin ;desired address is loaded into MAR.
2) R2out, MDRin, Write ;data to be written are loaded into MDR & Write command is issued.
3) MDRoutE, WMFC ;load data into memory-location pointed by R1 from MDR.

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EXECUTION OF A COMPLETE INSTRUCTION
• Consider the instruction Add (R3),R1 which adds the contents of a memory-location pointed by R3 to
register R1. Executing this instruction requires the following actions:
1) Fetch the instruction.
2) Fetch the first operand.
3) Perform the addition &
4) Load the result into R1.

• Instruction execution proceeds as follows:

Step1--> The instruction-fetch operation is initiated by
→ loading contents of PC into MAR &
→ sending a Read request to memory.
The Select signal is set to Select4, which causes the Mux to select constant 4. This value
is added to operand at input B (PC‟s content), and the result is stored in Z.
Step2--> Updated value in Z is moved to PC. This completes the PC increment operation and
PC will now point to next instruction.
Step3--> Fetched instruction is moved into MDR and then to IR.
The step 1 through 3 constitutes the Fetch Phase.
At the beginning of step 4, the instruction decoder interprets the contents of the IR. This
enables the control circuitry to activate the control-signals for steps 4 through 7.
The step 4 through 7 constitutes the Execution Phase.
Step4--> Contents of R3 are loaded into MAR & a memory read signal is issued.
Step5--> Contents of R1 are transferred to Y to prepare for addition.
Step6--> When Read operation is completed, memory-operand is available in MDR, and the
addition is performed.
Step7--> Sum is stored in Z, then transferred to R1.The End signal causes a new instruction
fetch cycle to begin by returning to step1.

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BRANCHING INSTRUCTIONS
• Control sequence for an unconditional branch instruction is as follows:

• Instruction execution proceeds as follows:

Step 1-3--> The processing starts & the fetch phase ends in step3.
Step 4--> The offset-value is extracted from IR by instruction-decoding circuit.
Since the updated value of PC is already available in register Y, the offset X is gated onto
the bus, and an addition operation is performed.
Step 5--> the result, which is the branch-address, is loaded into the PC.
• The branch instruction loads the branch target address in PC so that PC will fetch the next instruction
from the branch target address.
• The branch target address is usually obtained by adding the offset in the contents of PC.
• The offset X is usually the difference between the branch target-address and the address
immediately following the branch instruction.
• In case of conditional branch,
we have to check the status of the condition-codes before loading a new value into the PC.
e.g.: Offset-field-of-IRout, Add, Zin, If N=0 then End
If N=0, processor returns to step 1 immediately after step 4.
If N=1, step 5 is performed to load a new value into PC.

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