New Mansoura University

Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Computer Architecture
Lecture 1 - Introduction

Dr. Mostafa Elgayar

[email protected]
2023
History of Computer
System
 Mechanical Age
❑ First practical geared mechanical machines to compute information date to
early 1800s.
❑ Steam-powered mechanical computer.
❖ stored a thousand 20-digit decimal numbers
❑ Variable program could modify function of the machine to perform various
calculating tasks.
❖ input through punched cards, much as computers in the 1950s and 1960s
used punched cards
❖ It is assumed idea of punched cards is from Joseph Jacquard, a Frenchman.
 Electrical Age
❑ German inventor Konrad Zuse, invented the first electromechanical computer.
❖ His Z3 calculating computer probably invented for aircraft and missile
design.

❑ Z3 a relay logic machine clocked at 5.33 Hz.

❑ In 1939 constructed first electromechanical computer system, called the Z2.

❖ Zuse today receiving belated honors for pioneering work in the area
of digital electronics
Z3 Computer
 Electrical Age
❑ First electronic computer placed in operation to break secret German
military codes
❖ System invented by Alan Turing. It used vacuum tubes.
❑ Although design allowed it to break secret German military codes generated
by the mechanical Enigma machine, it could not solve other problems.
❑ A fixed-program computer system
❖ today often called a special-purpose computer
❑ First general-purpose, programmable electronic computer system developed
1946.
Enigma and Alan Turing
 Modern Electronic Computer
❑ December 23, 1947, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain
develop the transistor at Bell Labs.
❑ Followed by 1958 invention of the integrated circuit (IC) by Jack Kilby of
Texas Instruments.
❑ IC led to development of digital integrated circuits in the 1960s.
RTL, or resistor-to-transistor logic
❖ First microprocessor developed at Intel Corporation in 1971.
❑ Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor developed the
4004 microprocessor.
 Modern Computer Arch.
❑ Mathematician John von Neumann first modern person to develop a system
to accept instructions and store them in memory.

❑ Once systems such as UNIVAC became available in early 1950s, assembly

language was used to simplify entering binary code.

❑ Assembler allows programmer to use mnemonic codes…

such as ADD for addition

❑ In 1957 IBM developed FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) for its systems.

❖ Allowed programmers to develop programs that used formulas to solve
mathematical problems.
 Modern Computer Arch.
❑ First successful, widespread programming language for business
applications was COBOL (COmputer Business Oriented Language).

❑ Another once-popular business language is RPG (Report Program Generator).

❖ allows programming by specifying form of the input, output, and
calculations

❑ Since early days of programming, additional languages have appeared.

❖ Some common modern programming languages are BASIC, C#, C/C++,
Java,…
History of old
Microprocessors
 Microprocessor Age - 4004
❑ World’s first microprocessor the Intel 4004

❑ A 4-bit microprocessor-programmable
controller on a chip.

❑ Addressed 4096, 4-bit-wide memory locations.

❑ The 4004-instruction set contained 45

instructions.
 Microprocessor Age - 8008
❑ With the microprocessor a commercially viable
product, Intel released 8008 in 1971.
❖ extended 8-bit version of 4004
microprocessor

❑ Addressed expanded memory of 16K bytes.

❖ A byte is generally an 8-bit-wide binary
number and a K is 1024.

❑ Contained additional instructions, 48 total.

 Microprocessor Age - 8080
❑ Intel introduced 8080 microprocessor in 1973.
❖ first of the modem 8-bit microprocessors

❑ 8080 addressed four times more memory.

❖ 64K bytes vs l6K bytes for 8008

❑ Executed additional instructions; 10x faster.

❑ TTL (transistor-transistor logic) compatible.

❑ Interfacing made easier and less expensive.

 Microprocessor Age - 8085
❑ In 1977 Intel Corporation introduced an
updated version of the 8080—the 8085.
❑ Last 8-bit, general-purpose microprocessor
developed by Intel.
❑ Slightly more advanced than 8080; executed
software at an even higher speed.
❖ 769,230 instructions per second vs 500,000
per second on the 8080).
❑ Main advantages of 8085 were its internal clock
generator and system controller, and higher
clock frequency.
History of modern
Microprocessors
 Modern Microprocessor - 8086
❑ In 1978 Intel released the 8086; a year or so
later, it released the 8088. (Use CISC Instruction
Set)
❑ Both devices are 16-bit microprocessors.
❖ executed instructions in as little as 400 ns
(2.5 millions of instructions per second)
❖ major improvement over execution speed of
8085
❑ 8086 & 8088 addressed 1M byte of memory.
❖ 16 times more memory than the 8085
❖ 1M-byte memory contains 1024K byte-sized
memory locations or 1,048,576 bytes
 Modern Microprocessor - 80386
❑ Intel’s first practical microprocessor to contain
a 32-bit data bus and 32-bit memory address.

❑ Through 32-bit buses, 80386 addressed up

to 4G bytes of memory.

❑ 80386SX addressed 16M bytes of memory

through a 16-bit data and 24-bit address bus.

❑ 80386SL/80386SLC addressed 32M bytes

memory via 16-bit data, 25-bit address bus.
 Computer Architecture
• A functional description of requirements and design implementation for the
various parts of computer.
• The design of abstraction/implementation layers between Hardware and
software that allow us to execute applications efficiently.
• It deals with functional behavior of computer system.
• It comes before the computer organization while designing a computer.

Did You Know !

❑ Architecture describes what the
computer does
Computer Arch. Vs Organization

Did You Know !

❑ Organization describes how it does.
Von Neuman Arch.
• Also known as the von Neuman model or stored-
program computers
• Computer architecture based on a 1945 description
by the mathematician and physicist John von
Neuman and others
• Describes a design architecture for an
electronic digital computer

Did You Know !

❑ In Von Neuman Model -> Instruction is
fetched and executed in sequential
order
Non Von-Neuman Arch.
• A non von Neuman machine may thus be without the concept of
sequential flow of control and/or without the concept of a
variable.

• Examples of non von Neumann machines are the dataflow

machines and the reduction machines. In both of these cases
there is a high degree of parallelism

Did You Know !

❑ In non Von Neuman Model ->
Instruction is fetched and executed in
data flow order
 Computer Types
• Fixed Program Computers
➢ Their function is very specific, and they
couldn’t be programmed
➢ E.g. Calculators.

• Stored Program Computers

➢ These can be programmed to carry out many
different tasks, applications are stored on
them
 Instruction Set Design
• Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC)
➢ Instruction set as small and simple as possible.

➢ Minimizes amount of circuitry --> faster computers.

➢ Most instructions are completed in one machine cycle.

➢ Pipelining is a crucial technique used to speed up RISC machines.

➢ Ex: Common RISC microprocessors are Alpha, ARM, MIPS and SPARC.
 Instruction Set Design – Con.
• Complex Instruction Set Computers (CISC)
➢ More instructions, many very complex.

➢ Each instruction can do more work, but require more circuitry (slower)

➢ Instructions: a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory

store or are accomplished by multi-step processes or addressing modes in
single instructions.

➢ Ex: Common CISC processors are AMD, and Intel x86 CPUs.
 Control Unit Subsystem
• Program is stored in memory
➢ as machine language instructions, in binary

• The task of the control unit is to execute programs by repeatedly:

➢ Fetch from memory the next instruction to be executed.
➢ Decode it, that is, determine what is to be done.
➢ Execute it by issuing the appropriate signals to the ALU, memory, and I/O
subsystems.

• Continues until the HALT instruction

 System Buses
• A bus is a set of wires that acts as a shared
data path to connect multiple subsystems
within the system.
• A bus consists of multiple lines allowing
parallel movements of bits.
• The speed of the bus is affected by its length
as well as the number of devices sharing it.

• System bus is a bus that connect major

components (processor, memory, I/O)
 Data Bus
➢ Data bus: the lines of a bus that carry data.

➢ It consists of 8, 16,32,….etc. separate lines.

➢ The number of lines referred as width of

data bus.

➢ Each line carries only one bit.

➢ It is a bidirectional bus.
 Address Bus
➢ Address bus : collection of wires used to
identify particular location in main memory.

➢ It is used to identify the source or

destination of data.

➢ It is a unidirectional bus.

➢ The bus width determine the maximum

memory capacity of the system.
 Control Bus
➢ Control bus: regulates the activity on the
bus.

➢ Indicate which device has permission to use

the bus and for what purpose (reading or
writing from memory or from I/O device.

➢ It carries signals that report the status of

various devices
 Control Bus – Con.
➢ Memory read: get the data from address
location to be placed on the data bus

➢ Memory write: data should place on

address location.

➢ I/O read: get the data from Input device to

be placed on the data bus

➢ I/O write: data should place on output

device
 Memory Subsystem
• Memory array are built as an array of bit cells
• Each cell stores 1 bit of data
• They are specified by their size (depth *
width) and the number and type of ports
• All memories have one or more ports
• Each port gives read and /or write access to Did You Know !
• Each memory location has unique
one memory address address
• Memory address usually starts at zero
• An address is represented by an
unsigned integer
 Memory Subsystem – Con.
• Memory Consists of many cells (storage units) of a fixed size.
• Each cell has two important characteristics:
➢ its address (where it is)
➢ its contents (what’s stored at the given location).
• Memory width (W)
➢ How many bits is each memory cell, typically one byte (=8 bits)
• Address width (N)
➢ How many bits used to represent each address, determines the maximum
memory size = address space
➢ If address width is N-bits, then address space is 2N
 Memory Subsystem – Con.
Example
Consider this example a memory space as follows:
What is its memory width?
What is its address width?
What is its address space?
What is the content of memory location address 4D ?