A W processor issues groups of three instructions per cycle. Three pipelines are present, each very much like a 5-stage X pipeline. A program executes 120 million instructions in 50 million groups, of which 25 million groups contain exactly one branch. (A W does not allow gioups with more than one branch since the result is undefined.) Branches can only target the start of instruction groups. Branches are predicted "never taken". if they are found to be taken instead, subsequent fall-through instructions are squashed and execution restarts at the target. Branch prediction accuracy is 30%.
How many NOPs are present in the program code? (A) 3 million instruction (B) 30 million instruction (C) 120 million instruction (D) None of these
