Question

A computer has a pipeline with four stages. Each stage takes the same time to do its

work, namely, 1 nsec. How many instructions per second can this machine execute?

Wouldn t it be 250000000 instructions per second since each there are four stages so it takes 4ns for each instruction to go through the pipeline, no?

Answer 1

3ns (for first instruction to go down the pipeline).

10^9 ns per second. 10^9 – 3 = 999999997 instructions.