Assignment 1

Due: 10:45am, Thu Jan 18th, 2024

Note: Make reasonable assumptions where necessary and clearly state them. Feel free to discuss problems with classmates, but the only written material that you may consult while writing your solutions are the textbook and lecture slides/videos. Solutions should be uploaded as a single pdf file on Gradescope. Show your solution steps so you receive partial credit for incorrect answers and we know you have understood the material. Don't just show us the final answer.

Every homework has an automatic penalty-free 1.5 day extension to accommodate any health/family-related disruptions. In other words, try to finish your homework by Thursday 9:00am to keep up with the lecture content, but if necessary, you may take until Friday 11:59pm.

1. System A takes 500 seconds to run a program. The same program takes 450 seconds to run on a new system B. What is the speedup provided by B over A? What is the performance improvement of B over A? (20 points)
2. System A has two processors. Program X takes 230 seconds to execute on one of the processors. Program Y takes 230 seconds to execute in parallel on the other processor. System B has a single processor that can execute only one program at a time. Program X takes 100 seconds to execute on this processor. Program Y takes 100 seconds to execute on this processor. Which system would you pick if you cared about overall system throughput for a workload that is a mix of programs X and Y? (20 points)
3. A program executes 600 billion instructions. It executes on an AMD processor that has an average CPI of 0.8 and a clock frequency of 3.2 GHz. How many seconds does the program take to execute? What is the cycle time of this AMD processor? Assume that an IBM processor takes 100 seconds to execute the program. What is the speedup provided by the IBM processor, relative to the AMD processor? (30 points)
4. Colin designs a 4 GHz processor where two important programs, A and B, take one second each to execute. Program A has a CPI of 1 and program B has a CPI of 1.25. Nisha is tasked with designing the company's next-generation processor. She comes up with an idea that improves the CPI of A to 0.6 and the CPI of B to 1.0. But the idea is so complex that the processor can only be implemented with a cycle time of 0.33 ns. Does Nisha's new processor out-perform Colin's processor on program A? Does Nisha's new processor out-perform Colin's processor on program B? (30 points)