Computer Systems

Computers

Computer: Fast electronic calculating machine.

Accepts digitized input and produces output.

Personal Computer
- aka: Microcomputers
- e.g., Desktop, notebooks, tablets, cellphones
Workstations
- More computational power and reliability
- Intended for individual use
- Faster and more capable than a personal computer
- May have error-correcting memory.
  - Much more expensive than normal RAM.
Enterprise Systems (Mainframes) and Servers
- Accessible via internet.
- Much more computing power and storage capacity.
  - Usually, storage is in the petabytes.
Supercomputers
- For large-scale numerical calculations.

Software

Operating System: Large program used to control sharing of and interaction among various computer units.

Assigns resources to individual applications.
All devices need a device driver.
- Usually programming in Assembly or C.
Loader: Part of the operating system that loads programs into memory.

OS Routine Example: One processor, one disk, one printer
Program is stored on disk
Program transferred to memory
Program executed
Need to read a data file on disk into memory
Calculation
Print results via printer.
This invokes the relevant device driver.

Performance

Performance: How fast a computer can execute programs.

Most important measure of a computer

Three Factors Affecting Performance:

Hardware Design
- Also includes secondary storage, main memory, etc.
Instruction Set
Compiler
- Translates high-level programming language into machine language.
  - Application programs are usually written in high-level programming language.
- Cross-Compiling: Process of compiling a program on one platform for a different platform.

Buffer: Region of memory that stores information temporarily.

If the speed of a bus was bounded by the slowest device connected to it, it’d be very slow.
e.g., reading from secondary storage one sector at a time is faster than reading one byte at a time.

Cache Memory: The speed at which you can read stuff from main memory into the CPU’s cache memory also affects performance.

Somewhat like a buffer, but the technology is completely different.
- e.g., You can have a jump instruction in the cache memory that invalidates the entire cache by jumping out of it.

Processor Clock:

The execution of each instruction is divided into several steps, each of which completes one clock cycle.
Hertz: Cycles per second.
Clock Rate:
- Increasing the clock rate can increase heat, speed, and complexity.

CISC and RISC

RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computers
- E.g., ARM, MIPS
CISC: Complex Instruction Set Computers
- E.g., x86
Trade-off between N and S.
- It’s much easier to implement efficient pipe lining in RISC than CISC.

Multiprocessor Computer: Has multiple CPUs in the processor

Only thing shared is memory unit
Execute several application tasks in parallel
Execute subtasks of a single large task in parallel
Cost: Processors memory units, complex interconnection networks

Multicomputer: Each computer only has access to its own memory.

Messages exchanges via a communication network.
- Message-passing multicomputer.
E.g., the internet, SETI at home.

Functional Units

Basic Functional Units of a Computer:

CPU
Main Memory
- Non-volatile
Input Devices
Output Devices
Secondary Storage
- Non-volatile
- e.g., tapes
Buses
1. Address: Determines how much memory your system can access.
  - A n-bit CPU can generate/hold 2^n bytes of memory.
  - Motherboard manufacturers limit this.
    - Nobody is actually going to use 64-bits of memory for the next 10 years.
    - So even if the CPU supports 64-bits, the motherboard may not.
    - Limiting the address bus reduces the complexity of manufacturing.
2. Data
3. Control

\text{Program Execution: } \\ \text{Secondary Storage $\to$ Main Memory $\to$ CPU Registers $\to$ Execution}

Q: Why “Random” in RAM?
A: Because it takes the same amount of time to access any block of memory.

More on Address Bus

n-bit CPU	Can Hold (B)	Aka	Notes
16	2^{16}	64K	Early microcomputers
20	2^{20}	1MB	Using segmented memory
32	2^{32}	4GB
5	2^{5}	32B
64	2^{64}

Information Handled by a Computer

Machine Instructions:

Govern transfer of information within/between a computer and its I/O devices.
Specify arithmetic and logic operations to be performed
Program: A collection of machine instructions

Data:

Used as operands by the instructions
Source program
Encoded in binary
- Unicode, ASCII, and other standards assign textual values to binary.
  - ASCII is a 1-byte character set, it can store 2^8 (256)
    - Stores Latin characters.
  - Unicode is a multi byte character set, it can store 2^{16}
    - Stores every character.

Example:
When adding two numbers, the two numbers are data, the addition is a machine instruction.

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)

ISA: The machine language the CPU implements.

Built-in data types (integers, floating points)
Fixed set of instructions
- MIPS instructions are 4-bytes.
Fixed set of registers
- MIPS has 32 registers.
Interface for accessing memory
I/O

Microarchitecture: The physical architecture of a CPU.

e.g., MIPS, 8086, ARM, etc.

Program Execution

\text{Fetch} \to \text{Decode} \to \text{Execute}

Fetch the next instruction from memory
1. Address from program counter \to address bus
2. Emit read signal \to control bus
3. Capture the address in address bus and go to the location in memory
4. Fetch n-bytes from the address.
  - In MIPS, this would be 4 bytes, or 32 bits
    - In MIPS, the address will always be a multiple of four.
    - In MIPS, the program counter will be incremented by 4 bytes.
      - Unless you get a jump instruction (e.g., methods, if statements).
5. Bytes are loaded into the data bus.
Decode the instruction
Execute the instruction.

Note: The speed of the CPU is usually determined by the bus.
The speed of the bus is measured in gigahertz.
Manufacturer determines speed by testing at various speeds (changing clock speed) and finding the one the CPU is most-stable at.
The CPU spends most of its time waiting for the bus to transmit data.

Instruction Cache: Memory in the CPU that stores n kilobytes of instructions.

e.g., a 4 kb instruction cache in MIPS can store 1024 instructions.
- This means you can run 1024 instructions at the speed of the CPU, because you don’t need to continuously fetch instructions.

Data Cache: Memory in the CPU that stores n kilobytes of data.

Note: More on the Instruction and Data Cache
These used to be external, but are now built-into the CPU.
Instruction cache used to be modifiable, but modern security practices have cracked-down on this.

CPU

CPU: Electronic circuitry within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by performing the basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and I/O operations specified by the instructions.

Example: Comparing binary values at the low level
Add a to the two’s complement of b.
If all bits are zero, then a=b
Set respective status bit
If value is positive (MSBit = 0), a>b
Set respective status bit
If value is negative (MSBit = 1), a<b
Set respective status bit
(Actually achieved just by copying the MBIT to the status bit.)

Functional Components within the CPU

Control Unit (CU): Controls all activities in the CPU.
- Can be controlled by hardware or microcode.
  - e.g., MIPS is controlled by hardware
  - e.g., x86 is controlled by microcode.
Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU): Does binary operations.
Registers (REGS): Memory inside the CPU.
- Two Special Registers in MIPS:
  1. Program Counter
  2. Instruction Register: Stores current instruction being executed.
- ex: If you have 32 registers, you need 5 bits to address them.
Program Counter (PC): Contains address of the next instruction to be executed.

External:

Clock: Keeps everything synchronized (sequenced).

Interrupt

Normal execution of programs may be preempted if some device requires urgent servicing.

Example: Taking user input without being stuck polling for input.