today's lecture: pipelining

previously we've learned how microprocessors work.

modern microprocessors are pipelined

note:

without pipelining, different parts of the CPU are accessed during each of these, e.g. during the fetch, the ALU is not in use:

instruction fetch
decode (sets up input registers)

memory access
register write (writeback output)

we can increase the utilization of silicon by overlapping some instructions with pipelining.