CIS 273 Computer Organization

1
CIS 273Computer Organization Design

• Instructor Dr. Michael Geiger
• Spring 2007
• Lecture 1 Introduction

2
Lecture outline

• Notes from the syllabus
• Course staff
• Course policies
• Course outline
• Overview of computer organization
• History of computer design
• Modern computing
• How well approach computer organization

3
Course staff

• Instructor Dr. Michael Geiger
• E-mail mgeiger_at_umassd.edu
• Office Sci. Eng. Bldg. (Group II), Rm. 221C
• Office hours T 130-230
• W 200-300
• Th 130-330
• Teaching Assistants
• Harit Baveja
• Shiva Prasad Vadla
• TA tutoring/check-off hours TBA

4
Course materials

• Course web page www.cis.umassd.edu/mgeiger/cis27
  3/sp07.htm
• Announcements on web pagecheck it regularly!!
• Lecture notes, labs, HW assignments
• Links to additional useful resources
• Required text D. Patterson J. Hennessy,
  Computer Organization Design, 3rd ed.
• Recommended text S. Yalamanchili, VHDL A
  Starters Guide, 2nd ed.

5
Course policies

• Read the syllabus for all details
• Highlights
• ALL assignments are to be done individually
• Lab attendance is mandatory
• Class attendance and participation encouraged
• Quizzes will not be announced ahead of time
• Exam dates
• Thursday, March 15 in class
• Thursday, April 19 in class
• Final exam Tuesday, May 22, 1130-230

6
What you should learn in this class

• Principles of design in modern computers for both
  hardware and software
• How to assess and improve computer performance
• How a processor is designed, using a specific
  example to illustrate general principles
• How memory is organized
• How the CPU, memory, and I/O are connected
• How to design hardware using VHDL

 To understand the interconnection of the CPU,
memory, and I/O
7
Course outline

• General overview of computer organization
• Fundamentals of VHDL
• Instruction set architectures
• Computer arithmetic
• Computer performance
• Basic processor design datapath control
• Pipelining
• Memory system design
• Input/output interfacing
• Multiprocessor systems

8
The importance of computer organization

• Why should a computer scientist study computer
  organization?
• You probably wont be designing hardware, but
• you might work on embedded systems
• you could be designing compilers
• you want your software to perform well
• In all of these cases, you need to understand the
  hardware!

9
What is a computer?

• From The American Heritage Dictionary
• One who computes
• We could argue that people are computers
• A device that computes, especially a
  programmable electronic machine that performs
  high-speed mathematical or logical operations or
  that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise
  processes information.
• A little more detail on how these were developed

10
The abacus

• A counting table used to perform arithmetic
  operations uses positional notation to represent
  numbers

11
Algorithms

• Formalized procedures for accomplishing a task
• Developed by Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi in
  the 800s

12
Mechanical calculators

• First one created by Wilhelm Schickard in 1623
  preceded machines by Pascal Leibniz
• Gears inside handled arithmetic as numbers were
  dialed in

13
Charles Babbage

• Designed difference machine (at left) for more
  complex calculations
• Conceived the first general-purpose computer, the
  analytical machine
• Incorporated programmability through the use of
  punch cards

14
Electromechanical computers

• Conrad Zuse developed computers using relays
• Incorporated binary arithmetic
• Z3 (1941) was the first functional
  program-controlled computer
• 2,000 relays
• 5-10 Hz

15
ENIAC (1945)

• Widely considered first general-purpose
  electronic computer
• Used 18000 vacuum tubes 1500 relays, weighed 30
  tons, consumed 140 kW
• Programmed via 6000 switches and wiring
• Performed 1900 additions per second

16
von Neumann machines

• First stored-program computers
• Programs and data stored in unified storage

17
Transistor-based machines

• IBM 704 (1955) was a mainframe developed using
  discrete transistors
• The 704 was connected to several terminals,
  initiating the idea of centralized computing
  resources with distributed I/O
• First machine with floating point logic

18
Integrated circuits

• Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments
  integrated a transistor with resistors and
  capacitors on a single chip in 1958

19
Minicomputers

• Rather than focus on bigger, faster machines, DEC
  developed the PDP-8 (1965), the first
  minicomputer
• Widely used for process control

20
Microprocessors

• Intels Ted Hoff developed the 4004, the first
  microprocessor, in 1971 for Busicom, a Japanese
  company that manufactured calculators
• The 4004 provided an alternative to hardwired
  circuitry and is the first example of large scale
  integration of transistors

21
Xerox Alto (1975)

• First computer to use a graphical user interface
• Also featured a mouse, keyboard, and the windowed
  desktop with which were now familiar

22
Personal computers

• The MITS Altair 8800 (1975) was the first
  personal computer
• Cost 375
• 256 bytes of memory
• No display, keyboard, or external storage
• Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates
  wrote their first program (BASIC compiler) for
  the Altair

23
Supercomputers

• Cray XMP (1986) featured four processors
• Water-cooled to reduce heat dissipation
• Peak performance of 840 megaflops

24
Pentium 4 (2003)

• which is not as powerful as widely used
  commercial microprocessors today

25
Classes of computers

• Desktops designed for use by an individual,
  usually incorporating a graphics display,
  keyboard, and mouse
• Servers used for running larger programs for
  multiple users, often simultaneously, and
  typically accessed only via a network
• Supercomputers computers with both the highest
  performance and cost that are configured as
  servers and typically cost milions
• Embedded computers inside another device
  tailored to a particular application or set of
  applications

26
Sales figures

• Embedded computers most common by far

27
Components of a modern computer
28
Abstraction of program control

• Input/output self-explanatory
• Memory stores data and code
• Processor datapath and control
• Datapath performs computation
• How do we control processor?

29
Computer organization in a nutshell

• High-level description of
• Computer hardware
• Less detail than logic design, more detail than
  black box
• Interaction between software and hardware
• Look at how performance can be affected by
  different algorithms, code translations, and
  hardware designs
• Can use to explain
• General computation
• A class of computers
• A specific system