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MODULE 5: BASIC PROCESSING UNIT

5.1 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.

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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.

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.

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

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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5.2 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.

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

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• 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.

5.3 MULTIPLE BUS ORGANIZATION

• Disadvantage of Single-bus organization: Only one data-word can be transferred over the bus in
a clock cycle. This increases the steps required to complete the execution of the instruction
Solution: To reduce the number of steps, most processors provide multiple internal-paths. Multiple
paths enable several transfers to take place in parallel.
• As shown in fig 7.8, three buses can be used to connect registers and the ALU of the processor.
• All general-purpose registers are grouped into a single block called the Register File.
• Register-file has 3 ports:
1) Two output-ports allow the contents of 2 different registers to be simultaneously placed on
buses A & B.
2) Third input-port allows data on bus C to be loaded into a third register during the same
clock-cycle.
• Buses A and B are used to transfer source-operands to A & B inputs of ALU.
• The result is transferred to destination over bus C.
• Incrementer Unit is used to increment PC by 4.

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• Instruction execution proceeds as follows:

Step 1--> Contents of PC are
→ passed through ALU using R=B control-signal &
→ loaded into MAR to start memory Read operation. At the same time, PC is incremented by 4.
Step2--> Processor waits for MFC signal from memory.
Step3--> Processor loads requested-data into MDR, and then transfers them to IR.
Step4--> The instruction is decoded and add operation takes place in a single step.

COMPLETE PROCESSOR
• This has separate processing-units to deal with integer data and floating-point data.
Integer Unit  To process integer data. (Figure 7.14).

Floating Unit  To process floating –point data.

• Data-Cache is inserted between these processing-units & main-memory.

The integer and floating unit gets data from data cache.
• Instruction-Unit fetches instructions
→ from an instruction-cache or
→ from main-memory when desired instructions are not already in cache.
• Processor is connected to system-bus &
hence to the rest of the computer by means of a Bus Interface.

• Using separate caches for instructions & data is common practice in many processors today.
• A processor may include several units of each type to increase the potential for concurrent
operations.
• The 80486 processor has 8-kbytes single cache for both instruction and data.
Whereas the Pentium processor has two separate 8 kbytes caches for instruction and data.

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Note:
To execute instructions, the processor must have some means of generating the control-signals. There
are two approaches for this purpose:
1) Hardwired control and 2) Microprogrammed control.

5.4 HARDWIRED CONTROL

• Hardwired control is a method of control unit design (Figure 7.11).
• The control-signals are generated by using logic circuits such as gates, flip-flops, decoders etc.
• Decoder/Encoder Block is a combinational-circuit that generates required control-outputs
depending on state of all its inputs.
• Instruction Decoder
 It decodes the instruction loaded in the IR.
 If IR is an 8 bit register, then instruction decoder generates 28(256 lines); one for each
instruction.
 It consists of a separate output-lines INS1 through INSm for each machine instruction.
 According to code in the IR, one of the output-lines INS1 through INSm is set to 1, and all
other lines are set to 0.
• Step-Decoder provides a separate signal line for each step in the control sequence.
• Encoder
 It gets the input from instruction decoder, step decoder, external inputs and condition codes.
 It uses all these inputs to generate individual control-signals: Yin, PCout, Add, End and so on.
 For example (Figure 7.12), Zin=T1+T6.ADD+T4.BR

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;This signal is asserted during time-slot T1 for all instructions.

during T6 for an Add instruction.
during T4 for unconditional branch instruction
• When RUN=1, counter is incremented by 1 at the end of every clock cycle.
When RUN=0, counter stops counting.
• After execution of each instruction, end signal is generated. End signal resets step counter.
• Sequence of operations carried out by this machine is determined by wiring of logic circuits, hence
the name “hardwired”.
• Advantage: Can operate at high speed.
• Disadvantages:
1) Since no. of instructions/control-lines is often in hundreds, the complexity of control unit is
very high.
2) It is costly and difficult to design.
3) The control unit is inflexible because it is difficult to change the design.

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HARDWIRED CONTROL VS MICROPROGRAMMED CONTROL

Attribute Hardwired Control Microprogrammed Control

Definition Hardwired control is a control Micro programmed control is a control
mechanism to generate control- mechanism to generate control-signals
signals by using gates, flip- by using a memory called control store
flops, decoders, and other (CS), which contains the control-
digital circuits. signals.
Speed Fast Slow
Control functions Implemented in hardware. Implemented in software.
Flexibility Not flexible to accommodate More flexible, to accommodate new
new system specifications or system specification or new instructions
new instructions. redesign is required.
Ability to handle large Difficult. Easier.
or complex instruction
sets
Ability to support Very difficult. Easy.
operating systems &
diagnostic features
Design process Complicated. Orderly and systematic.
Applications Mostly RISC microprocessors. Mainframes, some microprocessors.
Instructionset size Usually under 100 instructions. Usually over 100 instructions.
ROM size - 2K to 10K by 20-400 bit
microinstructions.
Chip area efficiency Uses least area. Uses more area.
Diagram

5.5 MICROPROGRAMMED CONTROL

• Microprogramming is a method of control unit design (Figure 7.16).

• Control-signals are generated by a program similar to machine language programs.
• Control Word(CW) is a word whose individual bits represent various control-signals (like Add, PCin).
• Each of the control-steps in control sequence of an instruction defines a unique combination of 1s &
0s in CW.
• Individual control-words in microroutine are referred to as microinstructions (Figure 7.15).
• A sequence of CWs corresponding to control-sequence of a machine instruction constitutes the
microroutine.
• The microroutines for all instructions in the instruction-set of a computer are stored in a special

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memory called the Control Store (CS).

• Control-unit generates control-signals for any instruction by sequentially reading CWs of
corresponding microroutine from CS.
• µPC is used to read CWs sequentially from CS. (µPC Microprogram Counter).
• Every time new instruction is loaded into IR, o/p of Starting Address Generator is loaded into µPC.
• Then, µPC is automatically incremented by clock;
causing successive microinstructions to be read from CS.
Hence, control-signals are delivered to various parts of processor in correct sequence.

Advantages
• It simplifies the design of c ontrol unit. Thus it is both, cheaper and less error prone implement.
• Control functions are impl emented in software rather than hardware.
• The design process is orderly and systematic.
• More flexible, can be cha nged to accommodate new system specifications or to correct the design
errors quickly and cheaply.
• Complex function such as floating point arithmetic can be realized efficient ly.
Disadvantages
• A microprogrammed contr ol unit is somewhat slower than the hardwired control unit, because time is
required to access the micr oinstructions from CM.
• The flexibility is achieved at some extra hardware cost due to the control memory and its access
circuitry.

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ORGANIZATION OF MICROPROGRAMMED CONTROL UNIT TO SUPPORT CONDITIONAL

BRANCHING

• Drawback of previous Microprogram control:

 It cannot handle the situation when the control unit is required to check the status of the
condition codes or external inputs to choose between alternative courses of action.
Solution:
 Use conditional branch microinstruction.
• In case of conditional branching, microinstructions specify which of the external inputs, condition-
codes should be checked as a condition for branching to take place.
• Starting and Branch Address Generator Block loads a new address into µPC when a
microinstruction instructs it to do so (Figure 7.18).
• To allow implementation of a conditional branch, inputs to this block consist of
→ external inputs and condition-codes &
→ contents of IR.
• µPC is incremented every time a new microinstruction is fetched from microprogram memory except
in following situations:
1) When a new instruction is loaded into IR, µPC is loaded with starting-address of microroutine
for that instruction.
2) When a Branch microinstruction is encountered and branch condition is satisfied, µPC is
loaded with branch-address.
3) When an End microinstruction is encountered, µPC is loaded with address of first CW in
microroutine for instruction fetch cycle.

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MICROINSTRUCTIONS
• A simple way to structure microinstructions is to assign one bit position to
each control-signal required in the CPU.
• There are 42 signals and hence each microinstruction will have 42 bits.
• Drawbacks of microprogrammed control:
1) Assigning individual bits to each control-signal results in long
microinstructions because the number of required signals is usually
large.
2) Available bit-space is poorly used because
only a few bits are set to 1 in any given microinstruction.
• Solution: Signals can be grouped because
1) Most signals are not needed simultaneously.
2) Many signals are mutually exclusive. E.g. only 1 function of ALU can be
activated at a time. For ex: Gating signals: IN and OUT signals (Figure
7.19).
Control-signals: Read, Write.
ALU signals: Add, Sub, Mul, Div, Mod.
• Grouping control-signals into fields requires a little more hardware because
decoding-circuits must be used to decode bit patterns of each field into individual
control-signals.

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• Advantage: This method results in a smaller control-store (only 20 bits are

needed to store the patterns for the 42 signals).

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