CS209 Computer Architecture

HW/SW Abstraction
Somanath Tripathy
IIT Patna
 This Class
• Computer Designing goal

• Moore’s law (Technology development)

• Abstraction/ Level of Transformation

• Instruction Execution
 Computer Architecture
• Computer Architecture: The idea of designing,
selecting, and interconnecting hardware
components to create a computing system meeting
with desired goals (functional, performance,
energy consumption, cost, etc.)

• Goal : To familiarize with both fundamental operation

principles and design tradeoffs of processor, memory,
and platform architectures in computer system.
– Strong emphasis on fundamentals and design
tradeoffs.
 Computer Designing Goals
• Reliable
– Continue to perform correctly?
• High performance
– Speed, throughput
• Low power
– Energy (battery life)
• Low cost
– Per unit manufacturing cost

• Balancing all these goals is constantly

changing
 An Enabler: Moore’s Law

Moore, “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,”

Electronics Magazine, 1965. Component counts double every other year
5
Image source: Intel
Number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles ~ every two years
6
Image source: Wikipedia
Processor performance

Source: H&P Textbook

Inside a computer

8
 Abstraction
• An abstraction omits unneeded detail,
helps us cope with complexity

– Delving into the depths reveals more

information

9
 Levels of Transformation, Revisited
◼ A user-centric view: computer designed for users
Problem
Algorithm
Program/Language User

Runtime System
(VM, OS, MM)
ISA
Microarchitecture
Logic circuits

Breaking the abstraction layers and knowing what is

underneath enables you to solve problems and design
better future systems
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 Software Abstraction
int sum(int x, int y) 0x401040 <sum>: 0x55
{ 0x89
int t = x+y; C
0xe5
return t; 0x8b
} 0x45
_sum: 0x0c
assembly 0x03
pushl %ebp
movl %esp,%ebp 0x45
movl 12(%ebp),%eax 0x08
addl 8(%ebp),%eax 0x89
movl %ebp,%esp 0xec
popl %ebp machine 0x5d
ret code 0xc3
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 Hardware Abstraction
CPU Memory
Addresss Instructions
PC MAR 0000
0001 I1
IR MBR
0002 I2
Acc IOAR 0003
IOBR

Decode&Exec

IO
Data
Buffers d1
-- d2
--
--

------
 How to perform a Task?
• Task/ Program is a sequence of steps
– For each step, an arithmetic or logical operation is done
• For each operation, a different set of control signals is
needed

• Hardwired
– Connect to a particular hardware component
– Hardwired systems are inflexible
• Micro-program
– General purpose hardware can do different tasks, given
correct control signals
– Instead of re-wiring, supply a new set of control signals
 Instruction Cycle
• Instruction cycle constitutes of two steps:
• Fetch
• Execute
 Fetch Cycle
• Program Counter (PC) holds address of next
instruction to fetch
• Processor fetches instruction from memory
location pointed to by PC
• Increment PC
– Unless specified.
• Load Instruction into Instruction Register (IR)

• Processor decodes instruction and

performs required actions
 Different types of Actions
• Data Transfer
– processor-memory
– Processor I/O
• Data processing
– Arithmetic or logical operation on data
• Control
– Alteration of sequence of operations
– e.g. jump

• Combination of above
 Example of Program Execution
Ex. Let The processor has
a single data register AC
Let the PC content is 300
16-bit Instruction has 4-bit
opcode and 12-bit operand field

Let: Stored code

300: LDA [940], AX
ADD [941], AX
STA AX, [941]
Opcode meaning

0x1 Load AC from memory

0x2 Store AC to memory

0x5 Add AC and memory

ADD [941],AX

STA AX, [941]

Instruction Cycle State Diagram
Thanks