Areas covered:
a. CPU basics
b. Register set
c. Datapath
d. CPU instruction cycle
e. Control Unit
a. CPU basics: CPU components (register set, ALU, control unit); general-purpose and special-purpose registers; execution cycle; interrupts; micro-orders and microprogramming
b. Register Set: MAR; MDR; instruction fetching registers; condition registers; special-purpose registers (index registers, segment pointers, stack pointers); 8086 registers; MIPS registers
c. Datapath: 1-bus, 2-bus, 3-bus organization; analysis of execution cycle for the different organizations
d. CPU Instruction Cycle: Fetch instruction;
Areas covered are:
a. Memory Locations
b. Memory operations
c. Instruction classification
d. Addressing modes
e. Instruction types
a. Memory locations: Memory hierarchy (registers, cache, main memory); memory address register (MAR); memory data register (MDR); what is a word?
b. Memory operations: read; write
c. Instruction classification: 3-address; 2-address; 1.5-address; 1-address; zero address
d. Addressing modes: Immediate; direct (absolute); indirect; indexed; indirect; autoincrement; autodecrement
e. Instruction types: Data movement; arithmetic and logical; sequencing; input/output
Areas covered:
a. History
b. Architectural developments
c. Technological developments
d. Performance measures
a. History: Development of computers; first program-controlled computers (Z1, Z2, Z3); first electronic computer (ENIAC, IAS, EDVAC, EDSAC); first stored-program “Harvard architecture” computer (MARK I, II, III, IV); first minicomputer (PDP-8); first microprocessor (Intel 4004); first personal computer (Apple Macintosh, VAX-11); first supercomputers (CDC 6600, Cray-I); parallel computing (Intel iPSC, Intel Paragon); trends in development from centralized to distributed; cluster computing, grid computing
b. Architectural developments: Use of Complex Instruction Set Computers – CISC (Apple PowerPC, IBM); complex tasks such as converting BCD to binary; use of Reduced Instruction Set Computers – RISC (MIPS, Sun SPARC); reduction in instruction sets and addressing modes
c. Technological developments: Bipolar, MOS, CMOS; Integration scales – small-scale (SSI), medium-scale (MSI), large-scale (LSI), very large-scale (VLSI), wafer-scale (WSI); Moore’s law
d. Performance measures: Metrices – Cycles Per Instruction (CPI); Millions of Instructions Per Second (MIPS); Millions of Floating Point Instructions Per Second (MFLOPS); arithmetic and geometric mean; Other attributes – CPU/execution time; cycle count; instruction count; Amdahl’s law; speed-up measure
We have had a quiz, and a test as well. Here are the topics we have covered till date:
1. Introduction to Computer Systems
2. Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)
3. Processing Unit Design (topic in progress)
The Fall semester started last week. The courses I am taking are:
run “SPRING 2007 -terminate”
“The semester, she has ended”!
I just completed my last exam on Physics, and this marks the end of my semester. I hope to be more consistent in blogging my next semester here… Until then…
“Good night out there, whatever you are”
Internet was down, so I couldn’t post Friday’s stuff…
We started section 6 of chapter 14
We continued on the Mongols and how they were eventually subject to an over-stretched empire. We concluded the day’s lecture with the beginnings of the Ottoman empire…
We went over the topics from last lecuture…
We also were introduced to what will form the core of the “Database Systems” course coming up in later semesters : using sets to represent relational databases.
Then we started on the topic of the day, Relations. Here, we looked at domains and ranges, and some theorems on ranges.
Hamman's Study Diary 