GATE||COA|| Alu data path & Control Unit || Cache Memory|| Pyqs (2010 to 2025 )

Consider a main memory system that consists of 8 memory modules attached to the system bus, which is one word wide.
When a write request is made, the bus is occupied for 100 nanoseconds (ns) by the data, address, and control signals. During the same 100 ns, and for 500 ns thereafter, the addressed memory module executes one cycle—accepting and storing the data.

The (internal) operation of different memory modules may overlap in time, but only one request can be on the bus at any time.

The maximum number of stores (of one word each) that can be initiated in 1 millisecond is: _________
[GATE 2014 || SET-2 NAT || 2-marks]

Assume that for a certain processor, a read request takes 50 nanoseconds on a cache miss and 5 nanoseconds on a cache hit. Suppose while running a program, it was observed that 80% of the processor’s read requests result in a cache hit. The average read access time in nanoseconds is____________.
[GATE 2015 || SET-2 NAT || 1-mark]

The memory access time is 1 nanosecond for a read operation with a hit in cache, 5 nanoseconds for a read operation with a miss in cache, 2 nanoseconds for a write operation with a hit in cache and 10 nanoseconds for a write operation with a miss in cache. Execution of a sequence of instructions involves 100 instruction fetch operations, 60 memory operand read operations and 40 memory operand write operations. The cache hit-ratio is 0.9. The average memory access time (in nanoseconds) in executing the sequence of instructions is __________.
[GATE 2014 || SET-3 NAT || 2-mark]

A computer has a 256 KByte, 4-way set associative, write back data cache with block size of 32 Bytes. The processor sends 32 bit addresses to the cache controller. Each cache tag directory entry contains, in addition to address tag, 2 valid bits, 1 modified bit and 1 replacement bit. The number of bits in the tag field of an address is
[GATE 2012 || MCQ || 2-mark]

A computer has a 256 KByte, 4-way set associative, write back data cache with block size of 32 Bytes. The processor sends 32 bit addresses to the cache controller. Each cache tag directory entry contains, in addition to address tag, 2 valid bits, 1 modified bit and 1 replacement bit. The size of the cache tag directory is
[GATE 2012 ||MCQ || 2-mark]

An 8KB direct-mapped write-back cache is organized as multiple blocks, each of size 32-bytes. The processor generates 32-bit addresses. The cache controller maintains the tag information for each cache block comprising of the following. 1 Valid bit 1 Modified bit As many bits as the minimum needed to identify the memory block mapped in the cache. What is the total size of memory needed at the cache controller to store meta-data (tags) for the cache?
[GATE 2011|| MCQ || 2-mark]

A computer system has an L1 cache, an L2 cache, and a main memory unit connected as shown below. The block size in L1 cache is 4 words. The block size in L2 cache is 16 words. The memory access times are 2 nanoseconds. 20 nanoseconds and 200 nanoseconds for L1 cache, L2 cache and main memory unit respectively. 

When there is a miss in L1 cache and a hit in L2 cache, a block is transferred from L2 cache to L1 cache. What is the time taken for this transfer?
[GATE 2010 || MCQ || 2-mark]

A computer system has an L1 cache, an L2 cache, and a main memory unit connected as shown below. The block size in L1 cache is 4 words. The block size in L2 cache is 16 words. The memory access times are 2 nanoseconds. 20 nanoseconds and 200 nanoseconds for L1 cache, L2 cache and main memory unit respectively. 

When there is a miss in both L1 cache and L2 cache, first a block is transferred from main memory to L2 cache, and then a block is transferred from L2 cache to L1 cache. What is the total time taken for these transfers?
[GATE 2010 || MCQ || 2-mark]

A 4 kilobyte (KB) byte-addressable memory is realized using four 1 KB memory blocks.   Two input address lines (IA4 and IA3) are connected to the chip select (CS) port of these memory blocks through a decoder as shown in the figure. The remaining ten input address lines from IA11–IA0 are connected to the address port of these blocks. The chip select (CS) is active high.

The input memory addresses (IA11–IA0), in decimal, for the starting locations (Addr=0) of each block (indicated as X1, X2, X3, X4 in the figure) are among the options given below. Which one of the following options is CORRECT?
[GATE 2023 || MCQ || 2-mark]

A 32 - bit wide main memory unit with a capacity of 1 GB is built using 256M X 4-bit DRAM chips. The number of rows of memory cells in the DRAM chip is 2¹⁴. The time taken to perform one refresh operation is 50 nanoseconds. The refresh period is 2 milliseconds. The percentage (rounded to the closest integer) of the time available for performing the memory read/write operations in the main memory unit is _______ .
[GATE 2018 || NAT || 1-mark]