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Belgium Campus – Coa1x1– day 1

Computer architecture

© BELGIUM CAMPUS 2021

 Outcome 1
Identify integrated circuits

Outcome 2
Identify and describe Miscellaneous components and Connectors

Today’s Outcome 3
outcomes Demonstrate and understanding of systems

Outcome 4
Distinguish between integrated and non-integrated mother board.

Outcome 5
Demonstrate an understanding of the different mother board form factors

Outcome 6
Identify the benefits of ATX form factor
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What is the
System board?
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Motherboard types
Non-integrated

This is a graphics card. A

non-integrated motherboard
has several expansion slots.
You can add graphics, sound,
and more.
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Motherboard types
integrated
Video, audio, network capabilities are
integrated onto the board.
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Form factors

Form factors describe the shape and size

of the motherboards and the layout of
the components on the board.

ATX Advanced Technology eXtended

NLX New Low Profile eXtended

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Advanced
Technology PCI slots
Peripherals
eXtended
ATX Power

CPU Socket

1995
Northbridge &
southbridge
DRAM Slots
ATX was released by
Intel in 1995 to replace
AT and is now the most CMOS
popular form factor. Battery

SATA IDE
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ATX
Benefits Reduced Overlap between
Board and Drives
Better Cooling Conditions

Reduced Processor
Integrated I/O Connectors 3.3 Volt Power
Interference with Cards

User-Friendly Power
Integrated PS/2 Connectors Soft Shutdown
Connector
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NLX form
factor
New Low Profile eXtended

Ever seen something

like this?
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Chipsets
The motherboard's chipset
serves as the hub of all data
transfer through the system.

It controls all the data moving between the processor, buses, memory and
peripherals. They commonly have a heat sink to reduce heat as you can see
in the example on the right.
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North and southbridge

RAM CPU Graphics

northbridge

Northbridge &
Southbridge
Southbridge

PCI Legacy

USB BIOS
IDE
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CPU
Central
processing
unit
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The CPU

Arithmetic
Control unit
logic unit
input output
registers

Bus unit Floating point unit

storage
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The CPU

Array
Predictions Multiprocessing Clock speeds Cycles
processors

Video
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The CPU
Predictions

The term refers to the ability of the processor to predict, based on past instructions,
what the coming instruction will be in a set.
Processors have the ability to perform decision-making and instruction prediction.

Multiprocessing

This is when a computer can have more than one CPU.

Some integrated circuits (ICs) can contain multiple CPUs on a single chip; those ICs
are called multi-core processors.

Array Processors

A computer/processor that has an architecture especially designed

for processing arrays (e.g. matrices) of numbers.
The architecture includes a number of processors (say 64 by 64) working
simultaneously, each handling one element of the array, so that a single operation can
apply to all elements of the array in parallel.
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The CPU
Clock Speeds

Clock speed is basically the maximum calculation speed of the processor. The
actual speed depends on various internal factors of the specific chip as well as
variations in the manufacturing process.

Cycles

Every time it ticks (you don't hear the tick) an instruction gets performed.
The amount of instructions that can be executed per second is called, creatively,
"millions of instructions per second", or MIPS. MIPS is not the cut-and-dry
measurement of processor speed it once was due to the fact that processors today
can do an awful lot more than simply crunch instructions, but it still gives a good
idea of speed.
The clock speed is determined in Megahertz (MHz), which is a million cycles per
second.
Hertz is a measurement of frequency of a wave, equal to one cycle per second.
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Cache memory also called CPU memory, is random access

The CPU memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access

more quickly than it can access regular RAM.

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

Main
CPU L1 L2 L3
memory
cache cache cache

fast Transfer speed slow

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The CPU

Transistor moore’s Instruction

density law sets

As processors become Moore's law is the All processors have

newer and more observation that, over the their basic
advanced, the number and history of computing instruction set for
density of the transistors hardware, the number of executing day-to-
inside increases. transistors on integrated day code.
circuits doubles
approximately every two
years.