CS 2734 Computer Organization II

Checklist on the Conventional Machine Level

  1. Registers
    1. What registers does the machine have?
    2. How are they named?
    3. What are the purposes of the registers?
    4. How big are the registers?
    5. How can data be moved to, from or between registers?
    6. Does the processor have hardware support for register windows?
  2. Memory structure and addressing
    1. How is memory organized?
    2. What is the smallest addressable unit of memory?
    3. How are the smallest units grouped into larger units (size, order)?
    4. What is the maximum memory size supported?
    5. What ways can the address of a memory cell be specified as an operand?
  3. Computational unit
    1. What data formats does the machine support?
    2. What operations can be performed on each data type?
    3. What integer arithmetic operations does the machine support?
    4. What logical operations does the machine support?
    5. What types of shift operations are available?
    6. Does the processor support floating operations?
    7. If a floating point coprocessor is available, how does the instruction set support it?
  4. Control unit
    1. What is the normal sequencing of instructions?
    2. What types of transfer of control are possible?
    3. How can branch addresses be expressed in the instruction?
    4. What conditions can be tested in a conditional transfer?
    5. How is the return address stored in a function call?
    6. What conditions can cause an interrupt? A trap?
    7. Can interrupts be inhibited? If so how?
    8. What happens to control when an interrupt occurs?
    9. How does the processor support I/O?
    10. How are abnormal or error conditions detected?
  5. Instruction set format
    1. What are the basic instruction formats?
    2. How are opcodes encoded?
    3. How are operands encoded?
    4. What types of addressing are allowed?
    5. What combinations of operands are supported?
  6. Support for linkage
    1. What kind of hardware support for parameter passing is there?
    2. What is the form of the activation records?
    3. Does the machine support a stack?