Today, pipelining is the key implementation technique used to make fast CPUs.
Speed. Pipelining is used to obtain improvements in processing time that would be unobtainable with existing non-pipelined technology. The development goal for the IBM 7030 (the Stretch Computer) was an over-all performance of 100 times the 704 computer, the fastest computer in production at that time, whereas circuit improvements would only give a factor-of-10 improvement [CAM62, p 1-2]. This goal could only be met with overlapping instructions, i.e. pipelining.
A Pipeline is used to improve performance beyond what can be achieved with non-pipelined processing
Similarly, the goal for the IBM 360/91 was an improvement of one to two orders of magnitude over the 7090. Technology advances could only bring about a four-fold improvement [AND67, p 8].
In a more recent example, the 6502 microprocessor had a through-put similar to the 8080 processor running at a clock rate four times faster. This was due to the pipelined architecture of the 6502 versus the non-pipelined 8080 [EYE86, p 40-1].
Hennessy and Patterson [HEN96, p 127] state:
Today, pipelining is the key implementation technique used to make
fast CPUs.
Tony Wesley
Comments to author: tony@tonywesley.com
Last Updated: November 27, 1995