Computer Architecture Instructor: Wen-Hung Liao Office: 大仁樓三樓 Office hours: TBA Course web page: Textbook: Patterson and Hennessy, Computer Organization and Design, 3rd Edition. Companion website
Chapter 1 Computer Abstractions and Technology
Introduction Rapidly changing field: vacuum tube -> transistor -> IC -> VLSI doubling every 1.5 years: memory capacity processor speed ( Due to advances in technology and organization)
Moore’s Law Moore’s Law (Example) Year of introductionTransistors , , , , , ™ processor , ™ DX processor19891,180,000 Pentium ® processor19933,100,000 Pentium II processor19977,500,000 Pentium III processor199924,000,000 Pentium 4 processor200042,000,000
Things you’ll be learning How computers work, a basic foundation How to analyze their performance Issues affecting modern processors (caches, pipelines, parallel computing)
Why learn this stuff? you want to call yourself a “computer scientist” you want to build software people use (need performance) you need to make a purchasing decision or offer “expert” advice
Prerequisite Some background in assembly language Boolean algebra Logic design
What is a computer? Components: input (mouse, keyboard...) output (display, printer...) storage(disk drives, CD…) memory (DRAM, SRAM...) data path control network Our primary focus: the processor (data path and control) implemented using millions of transistors Impossible to understand by looking at each transistor
Below your program High-level programming language - Fortran - C/C++ - Java Assembly language: machine dependent Machine language: consists of binary digits,or ‘bits’ of information gram (in C)
Instruction Set Architecture A very important abstraction interface between hardware and low-level software standardizes instructions, machine language bit patterns, etc. Advantage: different implementations of the same architecture Disadvantage: sometimes prevents using new innovations
Modern instruction set architectures 80x86/Pentium/K6,PowerPC, DEC Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, HP, IA-64 RISC vs. CISC architecture
Where we are headed A specific instruction set architecture (Chapter 2) Arithmetic and how to build an ALU (Chapter 3) Assessing and understanding performance (Chapter 4) Constructing a processor to execute our instructions (Chapter 5) Pipelining to improve performance (Chapter 6) Memory: caches and virtual memory (Chapter 7) Storage, Networks, and Other Peripherals (Chapter 8) Multiprocessors (Chapter 9)
Homework Read Chapter 1 of textbook. Download appropriate SPIM simulator for your computer.
The Chip Manufacturing Process
Integrated IC Cost (empirical) Question: What is the approximate relationship between cost and die area?