Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

Exercises

1:	Why do hardware makers extend an already successful architecture?
2:	What are the drawbacks of extending an architecture, and what are some of the ways in which compatibility can be assured?
3:	What are the competing demands for transistors on a chip that must be kept in some balance in new implementations of an architecture?
4:	Cite one or two machine instructions, absent from Itanium architecture but present in other architectures, that you would advocate as additions in any extension of the architecture. Discuss both the difficulties and the opportunities.
5:	Unlike its predecessor, the Itanium 2 processor initiates seek operations for data from the L1 and L2 caches at the same time. Derive an access-time equation for a two-level cache ...