5. Computing Systems

Question 1

Embedded Systems

Answer 1

Computers that are designed to perform a narrow range of functions as part of a larger system

Located on a single microprocessor chip with the programs stored in ROM

Question 2

Bit-level Parallelism

Answer 2

Increase in processor WORD SIZE on a computer

–> reduces number of instructions that a computer must execute

Question 3

Instruction-level parallelism

Answer 3

Simultaneous execution of a sequence of instructions in a program (possible because some instructions can be carried out independently)

Question 4

Techniques that are used to achieve instruction-level parallelism

Answer 4

1) Instruction pipelining: execution of multiple instructions can be partially overlapped

2) Superscalar execution: Multiple execution units are used to execute multiple instructions in parallel during a clock cycle

3) Out-of-order execution: Instructions execute in any order that does not violate data dependencies (still under development)

Question 5

Data-level Parallelism

Answer 5

Single set of instructions run on multiple data sets at the same time

–> effective when the same process needs to be applied to multiple datasets

Question 6

Task-level parallelism (function parallelism)

Answer 6

Running many different tasks at the same time on the same data

–> focus on distributing tasks concurrently (performed through different processors)

Emphasizes the distributed nature of independent tasks