Question

What is the maximum throughput of a homogeneous pipeline in which four processors each handle one million instructions per second and processing a data item requires 50, 60, 40, and 30 instructions, respectively?

Answer 1

Explanation:

The maximum throughput is equal to the maximum number of data items processed per second cumulatively by all 4 processors.

Now, for a processor, the maximum data items processed per second

= (Number of instructions per second) / (Number of instructions per data item)

Thus, maximum data items processed per second for

processor 1 :

= (1,000,000) / (50)

= 20,000

processor 2 :

= (1,000,000) / (60)

= 16,666,67

processor 3 :

= (1,000,000) / (40)

= 25,000

processor 1 :

= (1,000,000) / (30)

= 33,333.33

Thus, cumulative throughput

= 20,000 + 16,666.67 + 25,000 + 33,333.33

= 95,000 data items per second