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<P><table class="ttop"><th class="tpre"><a href="02_Top_Level.html">Previous Lesson</a></th><th class="ttop"><a href="toc.html">Table of Content</a></th><th class="tnxt"><a href="04_Cpu_Core.html">Next Lesson</a></th></table>
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<H1><A NAME="section_1">3 DIGRESSION: PIPELINING</A></H1>
 
<P>In this short lesson we will give a brief overview of a design technique
known as pipelining. Most readers will already be familiar with it; those
readers should take a day off or proceed to the next lesson.
 
<P>Assume we have a piece of combinational logic that happens to have a
long propagation delay even in its fastest implementation. The long delay
is then caused by the slowest path through the logic, which will run
through either many fast elements (like gates) or a number of slower
elements (likes adders or multipliers), or both.
 
<P>That is the situation where you should use pipelining. We will explain
it by an example. Consider the circuit shown in the following figure.
 
<P><br>
 
<P><img src="pipelining_1.png">
 
<P><br>
 
<P>The circuit is a sequential logic which consists of 3 combinational
functions f1, f2, and f3 and a flip-flop at the output of f3.
 
<P>Let t1, t2, and t3 be the respective propagation delays of f1, f2, and f3.
Assume that the slowest path of the combinational logic runs from the
upper input of f1 towards the output of f3. Then the total delay of
the combinational is t = t1 + t2 + t3. The entire circuit cannot be
clocked faster than with frequency 1/t.
 
<P>Now pipelining is a technique that slightly increases the delay of a
combinational circuit, but thereby allows different parts of the logic
at the same time. The slight increase in total propagation delay is more
than compensated by a much higher throughput.
 
<P>Pipelining divides a complex combinational logic with an accordingly long
delay into a number of stages and places flip-flops between the stages as
shown in the next figure.
 
<P><br>
 
<P><img src="pipelining_2.png">
 
<P><br>
 
<P>The slowest path is now max(t1, t2, t3) and the new circuit can be clocked
with frequency 1/max(t1, t2, t3) instead of 1/(t1 + t2 + t3). If the
functions f1, f2, and f3 had equal propagation delays, then the max.
frequency of the new circuit would have tripled compared to the old circuit.
 
<P>It is generally a good idea when using pipelining to divide the
combinational logic that shall be pipelined into pieces with similar delay.
Another aspect is to divide the combinational logic at  places where the
number of connections between the pieces is small since this reduces the
number of flip-flops that are being inserted.
 
<P>The first design of the CPU described in this lecture had the opcode decoding
logic (which is combinational) and the data path logic combined. That design
had a worst path delay of over 50 ns (and hence a max. frequency of less
than 20 MHz). After splitting of the opcode decoder, the worst path delay
was below 30 ns which allows for a frequency of 33 MHz. We could have
divides the pipeline into even more stages (and thereby increasing the
max. frequency even further). This would, however, have obscured the design
so we did not do it.
 
<P>The reason for the improved throughput is that the different stages of a
pipeline work in parallel while without pipelining the entire logic would
be occupied by a single operation. In a pipeline the single operation is
often displayed like this (one color = one operation).
 
<P><br>
 
<P><img src="pipelining_3.png">
 
<P><br>
 
<P>This kind of diagram shows how an operation is distributed over the
different stages over time.
 
<P>To summarize, pipelining typically results in:
 
<UL>
  <LI>a slightly more complex design,
  <LI>a moderately longer total delay, and
  <LI>a considerable improvement in throughput.
</UL>
<P><hr><BR>
<table class="ttop"><th class="tpre"><a href="02_Top_Level.html">Previous Lesson</a></th><th class="ttop"><a href="toc.html">Table of Content</a></th><th class="tnxt"><a href="04_Cpu_Core.html">Next Lesson</a></th></table>
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