Question: Central Processing Unit (CPU) is one of the main components of a computer system. Answer the following questions related to CPU design and performance thoroughly

Central Processing Unit (CPU) is one of the main components of a computer system. Answer the following questions related to CPU design and performance thoroughly and concisely. You may draw a diagram to help you answer the questions if necessary.

  1. Control unit is one of major components in CPU. What is the primary advantage and disadvantage of the micro-programmed control unit compared with the hardwired control unit?
  2. Instruction pipelines have been widely used to speed up the execution of instructions in CPU. However, the conditional branch is one of the major factors that may affect the performance of the instruction pipeline adversely. List and briefly describe TWO approaches that can be used to deal with conditional branches.
  3. Symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) machine is one of the popular parallel architectures. List at least THREE of the major characteristics of a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) machine.

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