A computer consists of aprocessor and an I/O device D connected to main memory M
ID: 3617023 • Letter: A
Question
A computer consists of aprocessor and an I/O device D connected to main memory M via ashared bus with a data bus width of one word. The processor canexecute a maximum of 106 instructions per second. Anaverage instruction requires five machine cycles, three of whichuse the memory bus. A memory read or write operation uses onemachine cycle. Suppose that the processor is continuously executing“background” programs that requires 95% of itsinstruction execution rate but not any I/O instructions. Assumethat one processor cycle equals one bus cycle. Now suppose the I/Odevice is to be used to transfer very large blocks of data betweenM and D.
a) If programmed I/O is usedand each one-word I/O transfer requires the processor to executetwo instruction, estimate the maximum I/O data-transfer rate, inwords per second, possible through D.