Discuss one advantage of using instruction set architecture On the Internet, dis

Question

Discuss one advantage of using instruction set architecture

On the Internet, disadvantages of ISA are shown below

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The performance of a RISC processor depends on the code that is being executed. The processor spends much time waiting for first instruction result before it proceeds with next subsequent instruction, when a compiler makes a poor job of scheduling instruction execution.

RISC processors require very fast memory systems to feed various instructions. Typically, a large memory cache is provided on the chip in most RISC based systems.

Think of another disadvantage of using instruction set architecture

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Explanation / Answer

A major advantage of using an Instruction Set Architecture(ISA) is :

ISA acts as an interface between the software and the hardware of computer.If you want your computer to do a task for you,you need some source to convey to the coputer that I want to perform this task.Now computers only understand the language of instructions and ISA defines the set of instructions that the processor understand(different processors may have different ISA).Thus,ISA acts as an interface between the software and the hardware because by using ISA we can make the underlying hardware to do what we desire.

Another advantage of ISA is :

As long as two processors are using the same instruction set ,I do not need to worry about the hardware used to perform a task because on both the processors I need to issue same instructions to perform the same task.

For example if I want my computer to perform addition of two numbers and the instruction set used provides ,"ADD" instruction to do this task then I need not worry whether the hardware used for addition is carry look ahead adder or ripple carry adder,all I need to remember is ADD instruction.(eg. Intel and AMD use same ISA which is x86).

A disadvantage of using instruction set architecture is :

If a company wants to upgrade its processor,it cannot do this by changing instructions provided in ISA,this has to be done by adding new instructions in the ISA or by upgrading the hardware for current instructions.This is so because if I change the already provided instructions then the softwares that my processor currently support may not run on my processor after changng some instructions which will make me loose customer base.

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