The ____ stage of a 5-stage SimpleRISC processor executes a load or store instruction. Operand Fetch (OF) Execute (EX) Memory Access (MA) Register Write (RW)

The correct answer is Memory Access (MA) stage.

In a 5-stage SimpleRISC processor, the stages are typically divided into the following: Instruction Fetch (IF), Operand Fetch (OF), Execute (EX), Memory Access (MA), and Register Write (RW).

1. Instruction Fetch (IF): The CPU fetches the instruction from memory.
2. Operand Fetch (OF): This stage retrieves the necessary operands for the instruction (from registers or memory).
3. Execute (EX): The operation defined by the instruction is carried out in this stage.
4. Memory Access (MA): This is the crucial stage for load or store instructions. During this stage, if the instruction is a load, the CPU accesses memory to fetch the data into a register. Conversely, if it is a store instruction, the CPU writes data from a register back to memory.
5. Register Write (RW): The result of the computation is written back into the appropriate register.

Thus, the Memory Access (MA) stage is specifically responsible for executing load and store instructions in the pipeline of a SimpleRISC processor.