Hi everyone,
Can anyone help me to answer the question below? I would really appreciate it if you could help me. I have been searching for a solution for this question in books but could not find a proper explanation of how these things work.
A processor has 24 registers, uses 8-bit immediates, and has 36 different instructions (corresponding to 36 operation codes) in its instruction set. These 36 instructions are classified into 4 types as listed below:
Type-A: takes 2 source registers, uses 1 destination register;
Type-B: takes 1 source register, uses 1 destination register;
Type-C: takes 1 source register, 1 immediate, uses 1 destination register;
Type-D: takes 1 immediate, uses 1 destination register.
Assume that the Instruction Set Architecture requires that all instructions be a multiple of 8 bits (1 byte) in length, and the operation codes (opcodes) are of fixed length.
a) How many bytes do we need to use to encode the Type-A instruction?
b) How many bytes do we need to use to encode the Type-C instruction?