Highlights
Task 2 - Binary Addition
Solve the following problems where the last three digits of your student number is considered (showing all your working out and intermediate steps; show your working especially any “carries”).
(a) Convert each digit to binary.
(b) Add together the three binary numbers and state whether the answer is valid to 4-bit arithmetic.
(c) Use the result from (b) and convert it to a base 4 number. (Think: what is the “quick” method for base 4 conversion with bits?)
Task 3 - Truth Tables (5+5 =10 marks)
Using a Truth Table approach, prove whether the following identities are true or false (show all your
working out and intermediate steps in your truth tables).
(a) /A .(B +/C) = (/A+B).(/A+/C)
(b) /(A.B.C) = /A . /B . /C
Task 4 - Bitwise Operations
The bitwise operators(AND, OR, and XOR)are used to do bit-masking; that is,
• set (make 1), reset (make 0), invert (from 0 to 1, or from 1 to 0) a bit (or bits) in a byte (or word).
• Bit masks are strings of bits that allow for a single bitwise operation on a bit (or bits). Commonly a bit string is 8 bits long (referred to as a byte). Conventionally, the bits in a bit string are indexed from 0 staring with LSB. Let A = XXXX XXXX2, where each X is a unique bit (0 or 1).
Byte A X X X X X X X X
Bit Position 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
For bit-wise operations, let us consider a bit string, e.g., A = 1111 0000. We will number these bit from 0 to 7, starting from LSB. Now, suppose we want to ensure that bit 7 in A is reset (i.e., made 0). All the other bits are left untouched. For this purpose, we now must first create a bit-mask M and select an appropriate bitwise operator O. In this example, we create our mask M as 0111 1111 and select the bitwise operator O as AND. Now we perform the operation:
A AND M = 1111 00002 AND 0111 11112 = 0111 00002
Solve the following problems by finding the appropriate bitmask M and bitwise operator O. You can also choose more than one mask and operator, such as M1, O1 and M2, O2. Show all your working out and intermediate steps and use A = XXXX XXXX2 with your mask(s) and operator(s):
(a) Set bit 5, leaving the others untouched
(b) Make sure that bit 7 and only bit 7 is reset, the others are set.
(c) Set bit 1, bit 6 and leave the rest untouched.
(d) Make sure that bit 3 and bit 5, and only these, are set, the others are reset.
(e) Toggle the values (the opposite of what it currently is) of bits 0, 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7, and leave bits 3 and 4 untouched.
Task 5 - Logic Circuits and Truth Tables
Solve problems related to the two circuits (note the circle is equivalent to a NOT gate) below:

(a) (5+3 = 8 marks) Write down the equivalent logic expression (simplification is NOT required).
(b) (10+7 =17 marks) Write a truth table that shows the final output (O) for inputs A, B and C (Showing all your working out and intermediate steps, i.e., the output of each gate, in the truth table).
(c) Compare the final output columns in these two truth tables. Do these two expressions give the same output? Hence, are the 2 expressions equivalent?
Task 6 - Pipelining
Robin, Bryan, Finchie, and Dan each is cooking a meal which takes three ordered stages:
1. 7 minutes to read recipe
2. 10 minutes of preparing all ingredients using a knife
3. 15 minutes of cooking using a hot plate
Note: there is only one recipe book (used by one person only at a time), six knifes, two hot plates (hint: Draw timeline diagrams to calculate the total times etc)
a) How long does it take for all of them to cook sequentially? How long does it take for all of them to cook pipelined?
b) How and why does pipelining help with the throughput of entire workloads? the workloads involved in cooking the three meals as described above, in comparison to cooking all three meals sequentially?
c) Can pipelining help reduce the latency of anyone step in the process of cooking a meal, as described above? What impact (if any) do the additional resources for knives and hotplates have on the throughput of the pipelined process of cooking the three meals?
Task 7 – CPU Architecture
Give your answer but do not copy and paste from the “Internet”. Quote your references in your “Bibliography”.
(a)
1. Compare and contrast “multithreading” and “multiprocessing” in terms of hardware.
2 Explain how threads are used by the CPU to process tasks by describing a modern example, e.g., the multi-core mobile phone that you use every day has an interesting organisation of threads. However, it can be any other modern example of hardware that uses “threads”.
(b) ( There are a number of techniques used by CPU designers to improve the performance of their processors. However, these optimisation strategies do not always work – for some workloads, they may have no effect, or even cause performance to degrade. What is a circumstance where simultaneous multi-threading (S.M.T.) cannot offer any advantage, or possibly even cause a performance decrease
Task 8 - Memory
The following diagram represents the allocation of page frames for two running processes A and B, with the darker frames corresponding to process A.

(a) What happens when process A references go from page 5 to page 3?
(b) What happens when process A references the end of page 6?
(c) If organizing all pages of A close to each other, does it help improve speed of information access significantly? Why or why not?
(d) If page 7 of process A must be brought in, does it necessarily replace page 3 of process B? Why or why not?
Task 9 - Hamming & SECDED Code
(a) For data, using 4 Hamming code parity bits determine the maximum number of data bits that can be protected.
(b) A SECDED encoded character has been retrieved, with the hexadecimal value of CC916. You may assume that the SECDED parity is even.
1. Was there an error in transmission? Explain your answer.
2. If there was an error, either correct it (reporting the corrected ASCII character) or explain why it could not be corrected (Show your Hamming/SECDED table).
Advanced Questions
Question 10
(a) Describe the new hardware technology behind Intel’s “Optane Memory”.
(b) What does Intel’s “Optane Memory” provide?
(c) What are some of the claims made by the “Intel Marketing Department” regarding Optane Memory
Question 11
Do some research and find out how real (floating point) numbers are represented in Binary.
(a) Devise your own 16-bit representation for floating-point numbers. Draw a diagram of your representation and explain what the various bits are used for.
(b) Show how the numbers 1, 10, and 1/3 are represented in your system.
(c) If your student number is “s1234567”, then
A=7 and B=6
x = A + B/10 = 7 + 6/10 = 7.6
y = B + A/10 = 6 + 7/10 = 6.7
If either of these digits is a “0”, use 9 instead.
1. Show how x and y would be represented using your 16-bit representation.
2. Show in detail, the various steps needed to add together the two numbers x and y.
(d) When adding up a large number of floating-point numbers, in what order should they be added together to get the most accurate result? Explain why with an example.
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