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The computer lies at the heart of computing. Without it most of the computing disciplines today would be a branch of theoretical mathematics. To be a professional in any field of computing today, one should not regard the computer as a just a black box that executes programs by magic. All students of computing should acquire some understanding and appreciation of a computer system s functional components, their characteristics, their performance, and their interactions. Students need to understand computer architecture in order to structure a program so that it runs more efficiently on a real machine. In selecting a system to use, they should be able to understand the tradeoffs among various components, such as CPU clock speed versus memory size.
User Level Applications Programs High-level Languages Assembly Language/Machine Code Mircoprogrammed/Hardwired Control Functional Units (memory, ALU, etc.) Logic Gates
Lowest Level
USER Perspective
+ User Level and Applications; High-level Languages
The first instruction adds the contents of 32-bit register $s2 to the contents of register $s3 and places the sum in register $t0. A register is a storage unit capable of holding a collection of bits. Registers $s2, $s3, and $t0 are known as operands. The corresponding machine language is shown. The first field is known as the operational code (a.k.a opcode). The opcode specifies the particular operation to be performed. We will learn more about assembly language programming and coding later when we discuss instruction set architectures. Assembly languages and machine codes are specific to the architecture that is being used.
- The architect s job is to design a system that will provide optimum performance in the context of its users. This is essentially known as the constrained optimization problem . - The constraints may include:
Cost System Size Memory Capacity Thermal or mechanical durability Availability of components Immunity static charge Time to completion
- The logic designer deals with the implementation domain, which is a collection of hardware devices that make up a machine. - The logic gate implementation domain may be
VLSI on silicon Transistor-transistor logic (TTL) chips Emitter-coupled logic (ECL) Programmable logic arrays (PLAs) Optical switches, etc.
Class Exercise
Answer the following questions based on the information presented 1. How many bytes are contained in a 32-bit word? 2. The Tolstoy novel War and Peace has 696 pages. A CD-ROM can store approximately 600 MB of information. One character can be stored in one byte. Can the contents of the book be stored on a single CDROM? Show your calculations. (Assume each page contains 50 lines and there are approximately 100 characters per line.)