Suppose That a New MIPS Instruction, Called Bcp, Was Designed

question 6

Essay

Suppose that a new MIPS instruction, called bcp, was designed to copy a block of words from one address to another. Assume that this instruction requires that the starting address of the source block be in register $t1 and that the destination address be in $t2. The instruction also requires that the number of words to copy be in $t3 (which is > 0). Furthermore, assume that the values of these registers as well as register $t4 can be destroyed in executing this instruction (so that the registers can be used as temporaries to execute the instruction).
Do the following: Write the MIPS assembly code to implement a block copy without this instruction. Write the MIPS assembly code to implement a block copy with this instruction. Estimate the total cycles necessary for each realization to copy 100-words on the multicycle machine.

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Definitions:

Product Cost

The total of costs directly attributed to the production of a product, including materials, labor, and manufacturing overhead.

Contribution Margin

A metric that represents the amount of revenue from sales that exceeds the total variable costs associated with producing those sales.

Machine Hours

A measure of the amount of time a machine is operated during a given period, used for allocating manufacturing costs to products or activities.

Bottleneck Process

A stage in a process that limits the total output because it has a lower capacity than other parts of the process.