Question

SUBJECT: Computer Architecture, Pipelining

PROBLEM: Sequential Process for an annual dental appointment

Sequential Process:
1. Check-in patient (1 minute)
2. Take patient to chair and room (1 minute)
3. Complete cleaning (20 minutes)
4. Complete dental appointment (10 minutes)
5. Take patient to check-out counter (1 minute)
6. Check-out patient (1 minute)

For sequential process, one person completing each step for 10 patients would take (1 + 1 + 20 + 10 + 1 + 1) * 10 = 340 minutes.

INSTRUCTION: How do I fix the below issues from the problem above?

1. For the Sequential Process, what are the number of cycles required AND time for each cycle?

Answer 1

In the Sequential Processing, The second Patient will be entered into the queue after the first patient left the queue (i.e., after all the checkups)
This means in the 34 minutes slot there will be only 1 patient in the queue, After 34 minutes, next patient will enter the next slot (next 34 minutes).
Therefore total time will be 34 * 10 = 340 minutes.

This is sequential processing, Like this 10 patients will be in the queue for the preceding patient to complete.

Therefore there will be 10 cycles (1 cycle per patient) and 34 minutes per cycle. Total 340 minutes.

Whereas in the Pipeline processing, first patient enter the queue, whenever he complete his first checkup, he enters into next checkup and the second patient enters into the first slot. This reduces the total time, which I explained clearly in the figure.

In the Pipelined architecture, in the each slot , the task which takes maximum time is the time for that slot.

The total time for 10 patients in pipelining architecture is 234 minutes.