Pipelining in Microarchitecture

This web page is associated with a book called called The Animated Computer

The book can be bought at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Dr_Jerome_Heath_THE_EBOOK_ON_COMPUTER_DESIGN?id=WxOTBQAAQBAJ

The book gives excellent explanations for the animated images on this web site. This web page shows the animation of the computer designs in action. The book gives explanations of what the animations are about. Combining the books explanations with the animation provides a well rounded understanding of the animated computer.

The Microcode controls the process where instructions are moved and translated from the program as written to the accomplishment of the program in the new CPU and ALU. The result is that many commands can be done in parallel and thus a set of commands are done sooner than with regular processing. The compiler also needs to be savvy to the CPU it is working with. In the diagram a program command is in each of the sections (FETCH, DECODE, EXEC, WB) at the same time. Each is doing a different part of the ALU cycle.

Pipelining in Microarchitecture

Circuit Drawing Similar to: MAD Pipeline Design Detail - From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

The example shows how a set of instructions are sent through the pipeline. It also shows an example of a stall, probably based on a resource clash. The clock cycles are shorter since one clock cycle does only one sub-process of the ALU process. But the overall result is that many processes can be done at the same time. Thus the amount of code processed in a given time is much higher.

This is the picture that Intel draws to describe the advantages of this process. This is my own rendition for simplicity:

Ultimately the goal of pipelining is parallel processing. By using this methodology, we can produce tremendous gains in computer processing power.

The Animated Computer

Dr. Jerome Heath