CSC 4250Computer Architectures

September 19, 2006Appendix A. Pipelining

Three Classes of Pipeline Hazards Structural Hazards: Arise from resource

conflicts when hardware cannot support the overlapped execution of all possible combinations of instructions

Data Hazards: Arise when an instruction depends on results of a previous instruction exposed by the pipeline

Control Hazards: Arise from pipelining of branches and other instructions that change PC (what is PC?)

Structural Hazards

Functional unit is not pipelined, e.g., FP divide One register write port ─ two writes in a cycle;

when can this happen? Single memory pipeline for data and instructions

─ instruction contains data memory reference

Figure A.4. Load with One Memory Port

Why Allow Structural Hazards? Reduce cost Pipelining (or duplicating) all functional units

is expensive (e.g., fully pipeline FP multiply) Processors that support both instruction and

data cache accesses every cycle require twice as much bandwidth

Data Hazards

Pipelining changes order of read/write accesses:DADD R1,R2,R3DSUB R4,R1,R5AND R6,R1,R7OR R8,R1,R9XOR R10, R1, R11

Add writes R1 in WB stage (5th cycle) Sub reads R1 in ID (3rd cycle) → data hazard Same problem for And instruction What about Or? Or reads R1 in the 5th cycle, while

Add writes R1

Fig. A.6. Use of DADD Result Causes Data

Hazard

Minimize Data Hazard Stalls by Forwarding ALU result from both EX/MEM and MEM/WB

pipeline registers always fed back to ALU inputs If forwarding hardware detects that previous

ALU operation writes the register corresponding to current source for ALU operation, then control logic selects forwarded result as input

Fig. A.7. Use Forwarding Paths to Avoid

Data Hazard

Fig. A.23. Extra Hardware for Forwarding to ALU

Forwarding

Generalized ForwardingResult forwarded from pipeline register corresponding to output of one unit to input of another unit

Forwarding FailsLoad causes delay that forwarding cannot handle

Pipeline Interlock Hardware detects a hazard and stalls pipeline until hazard is cleared

MIPSMicroprocessor without Interlocking Pipeline Stages

Fig. A.8. Forwarding of Operand Required

by Stores

Figure A.9. Load Instruction Causes Stall

Figure A.17. Implementation of MIPS Data Path

Figure A.18. Pipeline Data Path by Adding Pipeline

Registers

Control Hazard

Branch may change value of PC Branch is taken or untaken Three cycles of delay on MIPS

MIPS Branch Delay

Clock Number

Instr. # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Branch instr. IF ID EX ME WB

Instr. i+1 IF stall stall stall stall

Branch target IF ID EX ME WB

Branch target+1 IF ID EX ME

Branch target+2 IF ID EX

How MIPS Reduces Branch Delay Consider only BEQZ and BNEZ Move zero test into ID stage (from EX stage) Compute both PCs (taken and untaken) early Additional adder in ID stage (old: use ALU) Only one cycle stall on branches Branch on result of immediately preceding ALU

instruction causes data hazard

Figure A.24. Branch Hazard Stall Reduced

to One Cycle

Data Hazard in ALU Instr. followed by Branch

Clock Number

Instruction # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ALU instruction IF ID EX ME WB

Branch instruction IF ID ID EX ME WB

Example.

ADD R1,R2,R3

BEQZ R1,name

Delayed Branch

Heavily used in early RISC processors Works well with branch delay of one cycle Sequential successor is in branch delay slot.

This instruction is executed whether or not branch is taken:

Branch instruction Sequential successor Branch target if taken

Figure A.14. Schedule Branch Delay Slot