Decoupled access/execute computer architectures

  • Authors:

  • James E. Smith

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin

  • Venue:
  • ISCA '82 Proceedings of the 9th annual symposium on Computer Architecture
  • Year:
  • 1982

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Abstract

An architecture for improving computer performance is presented and discussed. The main feature of the architecture is a high degree of decoupling between operand access and execution. This results in an implementation which has two separate instruction streams that communicate via queues. A similar architecture has been previously proposed for array processors, but in that context the software is called on to do most of the coordination and synchronization between the instruction streams. This paper emphasizes implementation features that remove this burden from the programmer. Performance comparisons with a conventional scalar architecture are given, and these show that considerable performance gains are possible. Single instruction stream versions, both physical and conceptual, are discussed with the primary goal of minimizing the differences with conventional architectures. This would allow known compilation and programming techniques to be used. Finally, the problem of deadlock in such a system is discussed, and one possible solution is given.