COMPUTER

 ORGANIZATION  AND  DESIGN  

5th
Edition
The Hardware/Software Interface

Chapter 1
Computer Abstractions
and Technology
 §1.1 Introduction
The Computer Revolution
!  Progress in computer technology
!  Underpinned by Moore’s Law
!  Makes novel applications feasible
!  Computers in automobiles
!  Cell phones
!  Human genome project
!  World Wide Web
!  Search Engines
!  Computers are pervasive

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Classes of Computers
!  Personal computers
!  General purpose, variety of software
!  Subject to cost/performance tradeoff

!  Server computers
!  Network based
!  High capacity, performance, reliability
!  Range from small servers to building sized

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Classes of Computers
!  Supercomputers
!  High-end scientific and engineering
calculations
!  Highest capability but represent a small
fraction of the overall computer market

!  Embedded computers
!  Hidden as components of systems
!  Stringent power/performance/cost constraints

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The PostPC Era

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The PostPC Era
!  Personal Mobile Device (PMD)
!  Battery operated
!  Connects to the Internet
!  Hundreds of dollars
!  Smart phones, tablets, electronic glasses
!  Cloud computing
!  Warehouse Scale Computers (WSC)
!  Software as a Service (SaaS)
!  Portion of software run on a PMD and a
portion run in the Cloud
!  Amazon and Google
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What You Will Learn
!  How programs are translated into the
machine language
!  And how the hardware executes them
!  The hardware/software interface
!  What determines program performance
!  And how it can be improved
!  How hardware designers improve
performance
!  What is parallel processing
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Understanding Performance
!  Algorithm
!  Determines number of operations executed
!  Programming language, compiler, architecture
!  Determine number of machine instructions executed
per operation
!  Processor and memory system
!  Determine how fast instructions are executed
!  I/O system (including OS)
!  Determines how fast I/O operations are executed

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 §1.2 Eight Great Ideas in Computer Architecture
Eight Great Ideas
!  Design for Moore’s Law

!  Use abstraction to simplify design

!  Make the common case fast

!  Performance via parallelism

!  Performance via pipelining

!  Performance via prediction

!  Hierarchy of memories

!  Dependability via redundancy

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 §1.3 Below Your Program
Below Your Program
!  Application software
!  Written in high-level language
!  System software
!  Compiler: translates HLL code to
machine code
!  Operating System: service code
!  Handling input/output
!  Managing memory and storage
!  Scheduling tasks & sharing resources
!  Hardware
!  Processor, memory, I/O controllers

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Levels of Program Code
!  High-level language
!  Level of abstraction closer
to problem domain
!  Provides for productivity
and portability
!  Assembly language
!  Textual representation of
instructions
!  Hardware representation
!  Binary digits (bits)
!  Encoded instructions and
data

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 §1.4 Under the Covers
Components of a Computer
The BIG Picture !  Same components for
all kinds of computer
!  Desktop, server,
embedded
!  Input/output includes
!  User-interface devices
!  Display, keyboard, mouse
!  Storage devices
!  Hard disk, CD/DVD, flash
!  Network adapters
!  For communicating with
other computers

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Touchscreen
!  PostPC device
!  Supersedes keyboard
and mouse
!  Resistive and
Capacitive types
!  Most tablets, smart
phones use capacitive
!  Capacitive allows
multiple touches
simultaneously

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Through the Looking Glass
!  LCD screen: picture elements (pixels)
!  Mirrors content of frame buffer memory

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Opening the Box
Capacitive multitouch LCD screen

3.8 V, 25 Watt-hour battery

Computer board

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Inside the Processor (CPU)
!  Datapath: performs operations on data
!  Control: sequences datapath, memory, ...
!  Cache memory
!  Small fast SRAM memory for immediate
access to data

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Inside the Processor
!  Apple A5

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Abstractions
The BIG Picture

!  Abstraction helps us deal with complexity

!  Hide lower-level detail
!  Instruction set architecture (ISA)
!  The hardware/software interface
!  Application binary interface
!  The ISA plus system software interface
!  Implementation
!  The details underlying and interface
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A Safe Place for Data
!  Volatile main memory
!  Loses instructions and data when power off
!  Non-volatile secondary memory
!  Magnetic disk
!  Flash memory
!  Optical disk (CDROM, DVD)

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Networks
!  Communication, resource sharing,
nonlocal access
!  Local area network (LAN): Ethernet
!  Wide area network (WAN): the Internet
!  Wireless network: WiFi, Bluetooth

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 §1.5 Technologies for Building Processors and Memory
Technology Trends
!  Electronics
technology
continues to evolve
!  Increased capacity
and performance
!  Reduced cost
DRAM capacity

Year Technology Relative performance/cost

1951 Vacuum tube 1
1965 Transistor 35
1975 Integrated circuit (IC) 900
1995 Very large scale IC (VLSI) 2,400,000
2013 Ultra large scale IC 250,000,000,000

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Semiconductor Technology
!  Silicon: semiconductor
!  Add materials to transform properties:
!  Conductors
!  Insulators
!  Switch

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Manufacturing ICs

!  Yield: proportion of working dies per wafer

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Intel Core i7 Wafer

!  300mm wafer, 280 chips, 32nm technology

!  Each chip is 20.7 x 10.5 mm
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Integrated Circuit Cost

!  Nonlinear relation to area and defect rate

!  Wafer cost and area are fixed
!  Defect rate determined by manufacturing process
!  Die area determined by architecture and circuit design

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 §1.6 Performance
Defining Performance
!  Which airplane has the best performance?

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Response Time and Throughput
!  Response time
!  How long it takes to do a task
!  Throughput
!  Total work done per unit time
!  e.g., tasks/transactions/… per hour
!  How are response time and throughput affected
by
!  Replacing the processor with a faster version?
!  Adding more processors?
!  We’ll focus on response time for now…

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Relative Performance
!  Define Performance = 1/Execution Time
!  “X is n time faster than Y”

!  Example: time taken to run a program

!  10s on A, 15s on B
!  Execution TimeB / Execution TimeA
= 15s / 10s = 1.5
!  So A is 1.5 times faster than B
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Measuring Execution Time
!  Elapsed time
!  Total response time, including all aspects
!  Processing, I/O, OS overhead, idle time
!  Determines system performance
!  CPU time
!  Time spent processing a given job
!  Discounts I/O time, other jobs’ shares
!  Comprises user CPU time and system CPU
time
!  Different programs are affected differently by
CPU and system performance
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CPU Clocking
!  Operation of digital hardware governed by a
constant-rate clock
Clock period

Clock (cycles)

Data transfer
and computation
Update state

!  Clock period: duration of a clock cycle

!  e.g., 250ps = 0.25ns = 250×10–12s
!  Clock frequency (rate): cycles per second
!  e.g., 4.0GHz = 4000MHz = 4.0×109Hz
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CPU Time

!  Performance improved by
!  Reducing number of clock cycles
!  Increasing clock rate
!  Hardware designer must often trade off clock
rate against cycle count

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CPU Time Example
!  Computer A: 2GHz clock, 10s CPU time
!  Designing Computer B
!  Aim for 6s CPU time
!  Can do faster clock, but causes 1.2 × clock cycles
!  How fast must Computer B clock be?

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Instruction Count and CPI

!  Instruction Count for a program

!  Determined by program, ISA and compiler
!  Average cycles per instruction
!  Determined by CPU hardware
!  If different instructions have different CPI
!  Average CPI affected by instruction mix

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CPI Example
!  Computer A: Cycle Time = 250ps, CPI = 2.0
!  Computer B: Cycle Time = 500ps, CPI = 1.2
!  Same ISA
!  Which is faster, and by how much?

A is faster…

…by this much

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CPI in More Detail
!  If different instruction classes take different
numbers of cycles

!  Weighted average CPI

Relative frequency

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 CPI Example
!  Alternative compiled code sequences using
instructions in classes A, B, C
Class A B C
CPI for class 1 2 3
IC in sequence 1 2 1 2
IC in sequence 2 4 1 1

!  Sequence 1: IC = 5 !  Sequence 2: IC = 6
!  Clock Cycles !  Clock Cycles
= 2×1 + 1×2 + 2×3 = 4×1 + 1×2 + 1×3
= 10 =9
!  Avg. CPI = 10/5 = 2.0 !  Avg. CPI = 9/6 = 1.5
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Performance Summary
The BIG Picture

!  Performance depends on
!  Algorithm: affects IC, possibly CPI
!  Programming language: affects IC, CPI
!  Compiler: affects IC, CPI
!  Instruction set architecture: affects IC, CPI, Tc

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 §1.7 The Power Wall
Power Trends

!  In CMOS IC technology

×30 5V → 1V ×1000

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Reducing Power
!  Suppose a new CPU has
!  85% of capacitive load of old CPU
!  15% voltage and 15% frequency reduction

!  The power wall

!  We can’t reduce voltage further
!  We can’t remove more heat
!  How else can we improve performance?
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 §1.8 The Sea Change: The Switch to Multiprocessors
Uniprocessor Performance

Constrained by power, instruction-level parallelism,

memory latency

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Multiprocessors
!  Multicore microprocessors
!  More than one processor per chip
!  Requires explicitly parallel programming
!  Compare with instruction level parallelism
!  Hardware executes multiple instructions at once
!  Hidden from the programmer
!  Hard to do
!  Programming for performance
!  Load balancing
!  Optimizing communication and synchronization

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SPEC CPU Benchmark
!  Programs used to measure performance
!  Supposedly typical of actual workload
!  Standard Performance Evaluation Corp (SPEC)
!  Develops benchmarks for CPU, I/O, Web, …
!  SPEC CPU2006
!  Elapsed time to execute a selection of programs
!  Negligible I/O, so focuses on CPU performance
!  Normalize relative to reference machine
!  Summarize as geometric mean of performance ratios
!  CINT2006 (integer) and CFP2006 (floating-point)

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CINT2006 for Intel Core i7 920

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SPEC Power Benchmark
!  Power consumption of server at different
workload levels
!  Performance: ssj_ops/sec
!  Power: Watts (Joules/sec)

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SPECpower_ssj2008 for Xeon X5650

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 §1.10 Fallacies and Pitfalls
Pitfall: Amdahl’s Law
!  Improving an aspect of a computer and
expecting a proportional improvement in
overall performance

!  Example: multiply accounts for 80s/100s

!  How much improvement in multiply performance to
get 5× overall?
!  Can’t be done!

!  Corollary: make the common case fast

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Fallacy: Low Power at Idle
!  Look back at i7 power benchmark
!  At 100% load: 258W
!  At 50% load: 170W (66%)
!  At 10% load: 121W (47%)
!  Google data center
!  Mostly operates at 10% – 50% load
!  At 100% load less than 1% of the time
!  Consider designing processors to make
power proportional to load

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Pitfall: MIPS as a Performance Metric
!  MIPS: Millions of Instructions Per Second
!  Doesn’t account for
!  Differences in ISAs between computers
!  Differences in complexity between instructions

!  CPI varies between programs on a given CPU

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 §1.9 Concluding Remarks
Concluding Remarks
!  Cost/performance is improving
!  Due to underlying technology development
!  Hierarchical layers of abstraction
!  In both hardware and software
!  Instruction set architecture
!  The hardware/software interface
!  Execution time: the best performance
measure
!  Power is a limiting factor
!  Use parallelism to improve performance
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