Chapter 2 Hardware Designed to Meet the Need

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Chapter 2Hardware Designed to Meet the Need

• The Digital Revolution
• Integrated Circuits and Processing
• Storage
• Input, Output, and Expansion
• Selecting and Purchasing a Computer

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The Digital Revolution
Whats all the fuss about digital?!
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The Bit (binary digit)
Recall from chapter 1.

• Bits are the 1s and 0s that allow us to
  represent, store, and manipulate data
• They are the smallest unit of data in a digital
  electronics device

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The Bit

• Bits arent really 1s and 0s, they are devices
  that can be set to one of two states.
• A bit can be a capacitor that is electronic
  charged or not charged.
• A bit can be an area of metal particles on the
  surface of a disk that are either magnetically
  charged or not.
• A bit can be a microscopic spot on a highly
  reflective disk surface that either has a pit
  burned into it or not.

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The Bit

• How can a bit (an on-off switch) represent useful
  data and information?
• Information can be assigned to the two states of
  the bit
• On
• Off

1 and 0 are typically used to describe the state
of a bit, but you could use anything
black/white, true/false, male/female, etc.
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Bit Bytes

• Bytes can also represent values using the
  binary number system.
• The binary number system uses only two values, 0
  and 1, and is used by computers and digital
  devices to represent and process data.

Decimal Binary
239 11101111
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Bit Bytes
2
1
4
8
16
32
64
128
2
1
4
64
128
8
16
32
Click to run Binary Counter position counter
here.
Binary is not only used for math but also to
digitize pictures, and music. In fact, most
things that we perceive with our senses can be
described and stored digitally as values (binary
numbers) and manipulated with numeric
calculations. More on this in chapter 6.
Also see http//pic.fsu.edu/colormap.exe
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The Value of Going Digital

• Anything that can be expressed through words,
  numbers, sounds, pictures, and even scents can be
  digitized.
• Digital information is easy to manipulate.
• Digital information is easy to copy and transfer.
• Digital information is long lasting.
• Digitization standardizes the format of all
  different types of data and information leading
  to

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Digital Convergence

• Digital convergence is the trend to merge
  multiple digital services into one device.

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Why Study Computer Hardware Components?

• Consider PC Choices

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Key Components
Processor
Memory
Storage
Removable Storage
Video
Networking
Security
OS
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2.2 Integrated Circuits and Processing
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Transistor

• A transistor is an electronics component,
  composed typically of silicon, that opens or
  closes a circuit to alter the flow of electricity
  to store and manipulate bits.

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Integrated Circuit

• An Integrated Circuit (chip) combines transistors
  and capacitors in a tiny module to store and
  process bits and bytes in todays digital
  electronic devices.

http//www.intel.com/technology/silicon/index.htm
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The Central Processing Unit
Intels Core Duo Processors use 65 nm technology
to cram hundreds of millions of transistors on a
chip the size of you thumb nail.

• The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is an
  integrated circuit (or microprocessor) that
  performs the processing in todays personal
  computers and other digital devices.

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Silicon Wafer
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Pentium 4
Die photo of the Intel Pentium 4 Processor
built on 90nm technology
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Chicago, IL
Satellite image of ChicagoWhich is more complex?
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CPU Components

• Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) contains the
  circuitry to carry out the instructions in the
  processors instruction set.
• Control Unit sequentially accesses program
  instructions, decodes them, and coordinates the
  flow of data throughout the system.
• Registers hold the data and instructions
  currently being processed (300 bytes).
• System Clock provides a steady clock signal used
  to synchronize activities within the processor.
  Measured in GHz (billions of cycles per second)
• Cache Memory Fast access memory for instructions
  and data soon to be needed (1-2MB).

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The Motherboard

• The motherboard is the primary circuit boards of
  a computing device that houses the digital
  devices circuitry including the microprocessor
  and memory.

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Processing

• The microprocessor accesses instructions stored
  in memory over the system bus.

Random Access Memory (RAM) is temporary, or
volatile, memory that stores bytes of data and
program instructions for the processor to access.
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CPU
RAM
FSB
Graphics
Northbridge
FSB
Southbridge
disk drives
input
expansion
C h i p s e t
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Processing The Machine Cycle
Central Processing Unit
Control Unit
ALU
2.Decode
3.Execute
Registers
1.Fetch
4.Store
The Machine Cycle The four stages of the machine
cycle are (1) fetch the instruction from memory,
(2) decode and (3) execute the instruction, then
(4) store the results.
Memory
A simulation Little Man Computer
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Contributors to CPU Speed

• Clock Speed measured in Gigahertz (GHz),
  billions of cycles per second
• Wordlength how many bits can be processed at a
  time (32 or 64)
• Cache size 512 KB 2 MB
• Front Side Bus Speed (FSB) 345-840 MHz
• Architecture

http//www.intel.com/products/processor_number
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Multi-core processors

• A multi-core microprocessor is one which combines
  two or more independent processors into a single
  package, often a single integrated circuit.
• Dual core
• Tri core (from AMD)
• Quad core

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Which processor is best?

• Truest Measures of Performance
• MIPS millions of instructions per second
• Gigaflops billions of floating point operations
  per second.
• Note that different instructions take differing
  amounts of clock cycles.

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Multiple processors

• Multiprocessing is processing that occurs using
  more than one processing unit.
• Parallel processing speeds processing by linking
  several CPUs to operate at the same time, in
  parallel.

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PC Processor Options

• www.intel.com
• AMD, an alternative to Intel http//www.amd.com/us
  -en/

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Moores Law

• the number of transistors per square inch
• on integrated circuits will doubled every 2
  years.

Are we approaching the processing capability of a
human?