Chapter 3

Hardware

3.1 Computer Architecture

CPU (Central Processing Unit)

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It is also known as central processor or
main processor. It is one of the main and basic part of the computer. The CPU is
very often installed as an integrated circuit on a single microchip. The CPU has
the responsiblity for the execution or processing of all the instructions and data
in a computer application.

John Von Neumann Architecture

Early computers were fed data while the machines were actually running; it wasn’t
possible to store programs or data, which meant they couldn’t operate without
considerable human intervention. In the mid-1940s, John von Neumann developed the
concept of the ‘stored program computer’, which has been the basis of computer
architecture ever since. The von Neumann architecture had the following main novel
features (none of which were available in computers prior to the mid-1940s):
» the concept of a central processing unit (CPU or processor)
» the CPU was able to access the memory directly
» computer memories could store programs as well as data
» stored programs were made up of instructions which could be executed in
sequential order.

Components of the central processing unit (CPU)

The main components of the CPU are the Control Unit (CU), Arithmetic & Logic
Unit (ALU) and system clock.

Arithmetic & Logic Unit (ALU)

The Arithmetic & Logic Unit (ALU) allows the required arithmetic (e.g. +, - and
shifting) or logic (e.g. AND, OR) operations to be carried out while a program is
being run; it is possible for a computer to have more than one ALU to carry out
specific functions. Multiplication and division are carried out by a sequence of
addition, subtraction and left or right logical shift operations.

Control Unit (CU)

The control unit reads an instruction from memory. The address of the location
where the instruction can be found is stored in the Program Counter (PC). This
instruction is then interpreted using the Fetch–Decode–Execute cycle (see later
in this section). During that process, signals are generated along the control bus
to tell the other components in the computer what to do. The control unit ensures
synchronisation of data flow and program instructions throughout the computer. A
system clock is used to produce timing signals on the control bus to ensure this
vital
synchronisation takes place – without the clock the computer would simply crash!
The RAM holds all the data and programs needed to be accessed by the CPU. The RAM
is often referred to as the Immediate Access Store (IAS). The CPU takes data and
programs held in backing store (e.g. a hard disk drive) and puts them into RAM
temporarily. This is done because read/write operations carried out using the RAM
are considerably faster than read/write operations to backing store; consequently,
any key data needed by an application will be stored temporarily in RAM to
considerably speed up operations.

Registers
One of the most fundamental components of the von Neumann system are the
registers. Registers can be general or special purpose. We will only consider the
special purpose registers. A full list of the registers used in this textbook are
summarised in Table 3.1. The use of these registers is explained more fully in the
Fetch–Decode–Execute cycle.

Memory
The computer memory is made up of a number of partitions. Each partition
consists of an address and its contents. Table 3.2 uses 8 bits for each address
and 8 bits for the content. In a real computer memory, the address and its
contents are actually much larger than this.
The address will uniquely identify every location in the memory and the contents
will be the binary value stored in each location.

(System) buses
(System) buses are used in computers as parallel transmission components; each
wire in the bus transmits one bit of data. There are three common buses used in
the von Neumann architecture known as: address bus, data bus and control bus.

Address bus
As the name suggests, the address bus carries addresses throughout
the computer system. Between the CPU and memory, the address bus is
unidirectional (i.e. bits can travel in one direction only); this prevents
addresses
being carried back to the CPU, which would be an undesirable feature.
The width of a bus is very important. The wider the bus, the more memory
locations that can be directly addressed at any given time, e.g. a bus of width
16bits can address 216 (65536) memory locations whereas a bus width of 32bits
allows 4294967296 memory locations to be simultaneously addressed. However,
even this isn’t large enough for modern computers but the technology behind
even wider buses is outside the scope of this book.

Data bus
The data bus is bidirectional (allowing data to be sent in both directions along
the bus). This means data can be carried from CPU to memory (and vice versa)
and to and from input/output devices. It is important to point out that data can
be an address, an instruction or a numerical value. As with the address bus, the
width of the data bus is important; the wider the bus the larger the word length
that can be transported. (A word is a group of bits which can be regarded as
a single unit e.g. 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit word lengths are the most common.)
Larger word lengths can improve the computer’s overall performance.

Control bus
The control bus is also bidirectional. It carries signals from the control unit
(CU)
to all the other computer components. It is usually 8-bits wide. There is no real
need for it to be any wider since it only carries control signals.

Fetch-Decode-Execute cycle
The fetch-decode-execute cycle (also known as the instruction cycle) is the cycle
that the central processing unit (CPU) follows from boot-up until the computer has
shut down in order to process instructions. It is composed of three main stages:
the fetch stage, the decode stage, and the execute stage.

During the fetch stage, the CPU retrieves an instruction from memory. In the decode
stage, the CPU decodes the instruction and determines what operation it specifies.
Finally, in the execute stage, the CPU performs the operation specified by the
instruction.
Cores, cache and internal clock

Core
In computing, a core is a processing unit that performs certain actions. Every
action you perform on your computer is processed by your CPU, no matter how small
or large the task. Each core can perform only one task at a time. A CPU can have
multiple cores. A processor with two cores is called a dual-core processor; with
four cores, a quad-core; six cores, hexa-core; eight cores, octa-core. As of 2019,
most consumer CPUs feature between two and twelve cores. Workstation and server
CPUs may feature as many as 48 cores.

Cache
In computing, a cache is a hardware or software component that stores data
temporarily in a small amount of faster memory. It is used to improve the
performance of recently or frequently accessed data by serving it faster than from
the main memory or hard drive. Data is transferred from the main memory to the
cache in fixed blocks using a look-ahead algorithm.

Clock
In computing, a clock is an electronic device that generates signals at a specific
frequency to synchronize the operations of other digital circuits. The clock signal
is used to control the timing of the fetch-decode-execute cycle of a computer’s
central processing unit (CPU), as well as other operations. The use of cache
memories can also improve CPU performance. Unlike RAM, cache memory is located
within the CPU itself,which means it has much faster data access times than RAM.
Cache memory stores frequently used instructions and data that need to be accessed
faster, which improves CPU performance. When a CPU wishes to read memory, it will
first check out the cache and then move on to main memory/RAM if the required data
isn’t there. The larger the cache memory size the better the CPU performance.

Instruction set

An instruction set is a group of commands that a CPU can understand and execute.
Each command tells the CPU to perform a specific operation, such as adding two
numbers together or moving data from one location to another.

Different CPUs have different instruction sets. For example, the x86 instruction
set is used by most Intel and AMD CPUs, while the ARM instruction set is used by
many mobile devices.

Embedded system

An embedded system is a microprocessor-based computer hardware system with software

that is designed to perform a dedicated function, either as an independent system
or as a part of a large system. Embedded system is used in motor vehicles, vending
machines, washing machines etc.