Learning Outcomes

 An introduction to the architecture of microcomputers in general and to

the IBM PC in particular.
 Explore the main hardware components
 central processor,
 memory, and
 peripherals, and their relation to the software, or programs
 Learn what the computer does when it executes an instruction,
 Discuss the main advantages (and disadvantages) of assembly language
programming

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Microcomputer system
 A microcomputer system consists of a system unit, a keyboard, a display
screen and a disk drivers
 The system unit is often referred to as the computer as it houses the circuit
boards of the computer
 I/O devices perform input/output operations
 Peripheral devices or peripherals
 ICs are used to construct a computer circuit
 Contains thousands of transistors
 Digital circuits operate on voltage signal level
 High/low (1/0) voltage

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Microcomputer system (1)
 These symbols are called binary digits or bits
 All information represented by strings of 0’s and 1’s
 Functionally computer circuits consist of three parts:
 Central Processing Unit (CPU)
 Memory circuits
 I/O circuits

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The System Board

• Contains the microprocessor and

memory circuits
• Refers as a motherboard because
it contains expansion slots, add-in
boards
• I/O circuits are located on add-in
cards

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Memory
 Information processed by the computer is stored in its memory.
 A memory circuit element can store one bit of data.
 The memory circuits are usually organized into groups that can store eight
bits of data.
 A string of eight bits is called a byte.
 Memory byte is identified by a number that is called its “address”
 Data stored in a memory byte are called its contents

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Memory (1)

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Memory (2)
 Example: Suppose a processor uses 20 bits for an address. How many
memory bytes can be accessed?
 Solution: A bit can have two possible values, so in a 20-bits address there
can be 220 = 1,048,576 different values, with each value being the potential
address of a memory byte. In computer terminology, the number 220 is
called 1 mega. Thus, a 20-bit address can be used to address 1 megabyte or 1
MB.

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Memory (3)
 Bit position
 Represents in a microcomputer as word and a byte.
 Positions are numbered from right to left, starting with 0.
 In a word, 0 to 7 form as low byte and from 8 to 15 form as high byte

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Memory (4)
 Memory operations: Processor can perform two operations on memory
 Read (fetch) – the content of a location, processor gets a copy of the data
 Write (store) – data at a location, the new contents of the location
 There are two kinds of memory circuits
 RAM
 Locations can be read and written
 Contents of RAM memory are lost when the machine is turned off
 ROM
 Location can only be read
 ROM retains their values even when the power is off

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Memory (5)
 Buses
 A set of wires or connections called buses that connect the different
components
 There are three kind of buses:
 Address bus
 Data bus
 Control bus

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The CPU
 Refers as the brain of the computer.
 Controls the computer by executing programs stored in memory.
 System program
 An application program
 Instructions performed by a CPU are called its instruction set
 Intel 8086 microprocessor as an example of a CPU
 There are two main components:
 Execution unit
 Bus interface unit

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 Intel 8086 Microprocessor Organization

Gives instructions BIU takes care of all

to BIU stating from data and addresses
where to fetch the transfers on the buses
data and then for the EU like
decode and execute sending addresses,
those instructions. fetching instructions
from the memory.

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The CPU (2)
 Execution Unit (EU)
 The purpose of the EU is to execute instructions.
 Contains a circuit called the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU).
 ALU can perform arithmetic (+, - , / , x) and logic (AND, OR, NOT)
operations.
 Data for the operations are stored in circuits called registers.
 A memory location except that normally refer to it by a name rather than a
number.
 EU has eight registers for storing data;
 EU contains temporary ' registers for holding operands for the ALU, and the
FLAGS register

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The CPU (3)
 Bus Interface Unit (BIU)
 Facilitates communication between the EU and the memory or I/O circuits.
 Responsible for transmitting addresses, data, and control signals on the
buses.
 Registers hold addresses of memory locations.
 Fetches up to six bytes of the next instruction and places them in the
instruction queue
 Instruction prefetch

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I/O Ports
 I/O devices are connected to the computer through I/O circuits
 Contains several registers called I/O ports
 I/O ports have addresses and are connected to the bus system.
 Allows the CPU to distinguish between an I/O port and a memory
location.
 Serial and Parallel Ports
 Data transfer between an I/O port and an I/O device can be 1 bit at a time
(serial), or 8 or 16 bits at a time (parallel)

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Instruction execution
 A machine instruction has two parts:
 Opcode
 Specifies the type of operation.
 Operands
 Provide memory addresses to the data to be operated on.
 The CPU goes through the following steps to execute a machine
instruction
 Fetch
 Execute
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Fetch and Execute
1. Fetch an instruction from memory.
2. Decode the Instruction to determine the operation.
3. Fetch data from memory if necessary.
4. Perform the operation on the data.
5. Store the result in memory if needed.

Fetch

Execute

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Programming Language
 Machine language
 A CPU can only execute machine language instructions
 Bit strings

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Programming Language (1)
 Assembly language
 A more convenient language
 Uses symbolic names to represent operations, registers, and memory
locations.
 Converts to machine language before the CPU can execute it
 Assembler

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Programming Language (2)
 High-Level Languages
 FORTRAN, Pascal, C and others.
 Different high-level languages are designed for different applications.
 Compiler is needed to translate a high-level language program into machine
code.
 Advantages of High-Level Languages
 Closer to natural languages.
 Easier to convert a natural language algorithm to a high-level language
program.
 Easier to read and understand a high-level language program .
 Program can be executed on any machine

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Programming Language (3)
 Advantages of Assembly Languages
 Produces a faster, shorter machine language program.
 Easy to read or write to specific memory locations and I/O ports.
 Many high-level languages accept subprograms written in assembly language.
 Gains a feeling for the way the computer "think” and why certain things
happen the way they do inside the computer.

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 Assembly language program
Model Segment
Stack Segment
an assembler directive
Temporary storage of
that specifies the size of
addresses and data
the program

A program's instructions
are placed in the code
Data Segment segment
Variables are declared in
the data segment

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