Course Outline and Recommended Texts

Course Outline
• History of digital computers and micro processors; Microprocessors
preliminaries, micro processor in system design. Basic digital building block
register, counter, clock etc. microprocessor hardware, algorithms and their
suitability for microprocessor implementation, microprocessor software,
microprocessor applications
Recommended Texts:
• Computer Organization and Architecture Designing for Performance by William Stallings
• Structured Computer Organization by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
• Computer Organization and Embedded Systems by Carl Hamacher, Zvonko Vranesic,
Safwat Zaky and Naraig Manjikian
• Digital System Design- Use of Microcontroller by Dawoud S Dawoud and R. Peplow
History of computers and microprocessors
• Review EEG 204, EEG314, CPE313
• Trace the history of Computers from the vacuum tube to transistor
technology
• Stored program concept:
• History and development of microprocessors
• History and development of Programming languages: high level, low level,
machine, assembly
• History and development of Operating systems: DOS, Windows, Linux, Unix
• New trends in Computers and types
• Types of Computers: embedded systems; personal computers; servers and
enterprise systems, Grid and networked systems, cloud computing
 Introductions: Computer Fundamentals
⮚ Computer- electronic device, input, data, store, process, output, information
⮚ components- hardware and software
✔Hardware: input, memory, processors, output; all interconnected by buses
✔Software: system software and application software; use of programming language
• However, hardware and software are logically equivalent and there is no
much difference between the two again.
• The decision to put certain functions in hardware and others in software is
based on such factors as cost, speed, reliability, and frequency of expected
changes.
• Functions of the computer are: Data processing; Data storage; Data
movement (I-O operation and data communication) and Control
Internal structure of Computer
• A computer system consists of the following components and a typical
computer may consist one or more of the components.
• Central processing unit (CPU)/Processor: Controls the operation of the
computer and performs its data processing functions; it performs the
tasks of fetching, decoding, and executing of instructions
• Main memory: Stores data.
• I/O: Moves data between the computer and its external environment.
• System interconnection: Some mechanism that provides for
communication among CPU, main memory, and I/O. A common example
of system interconnection is by means of a system bus, consisting of a
number of conducting wires to which all the other components attach.
Computing sequence of Operation
• A typical computing task consists of a series of operations specified by a
sequence of instructions that constitute a program.
• The processor fetches one instruction at a time and performs the operation
specified.
• Instructions are fetched from successive memory locations until a branch or a
jump instruction is encountered.
• The processor uses the program counter, PC, to keep track of the address of the
next instruction to be fetched and executed. After fetching an instruction, the
contents of the PC are updated to point to the next instruction in sequence. A
branch instruction may cause a different value to be loaded into the PC.
• When an instruction is fetched, it is placed in the instruction register, IR, from
where it is interpreted, or decoded, by the processor’s control circuitry.
• The IR holds the instruction until its execution is completed.
 structural components of CPU
• Control unit: Controls the operation of the CPU and hence the computer
• Arithmetic and logic unit (ALU): Performs the computer’s data processing
functions
• Registers: Provides storage internal to the CPU
• CPU interconnection: Some mechanism that provides for communication
among the control unit, ALU, and registers
 CPU
• CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the ‘‘brain’’ of the computer.
• Its function is to execute programs stored in the main memory
by fetching their instructions, examining them (decoding), and
then executing them one after another.
• The components of the CPU are connected by a bus, which is a
collection of parallel wires for transmitting address, data, and
control signals.
• Buses can be external to the CPU, connecting it to memory and
I/O devices, but also internal to the CPU
Components of CPU
• The control unit (CU): responsible for fetching instructions from main
memory and determining their type.
• The arithmetic logic unit (ALU): performs operations such as addition
and Boolean AND needed to carry out the instructions.
• Registers: small, high-speed memory used to store temporary results
and certain control information. All the registers have the same size.
Each register can hold one number, up to some maximum determined
by the size of the register. Registers can be read and written at high
speed since they are internal to the CPU.
organization of a simple computer with one CPU and two I/O devices

Control unit

Arithmetic
and logical
unit

Registers
Main
: Memory Printer
: Disk
:
 Registers
• Program Counter (PC):points to the next instruction to be fetched for
execution.
• Instruction Register (IR), which holds the instruction currently being
executed.
• Memory address register (MAR): Contains the address of a location in
memory
• Memory buffer register (MBR): Contains a word of data to be written to
memory or the word most recently read
• PC, IR, MAR, MBR are used for the movement of data between the
processor and memory.
• Accumulator: to hold results
Registers

• Segment pointers: In a machine with segmented addressing a

segment register holds the address of the base of the segment.
There may be multiple registers: for example, one for the operating
system and one for the current process.
• Index registers: These are used for indexed addressing and may be
autoindexed.
• Stack pointer: If there is user-visible stack addressing, then
typically there is a dedicated register that points to the top of the
stack. This allows implicit addressing; that is, push, pop, and other
stack instructions need not contain an explicit stack operand.
 Program Status Word (PSW) Registers
• PSW registers contain status information, typically condition codes plus other
status information. Common fields or flags include:
• Sign: Contains the sign bit of the result of the last arithmetic operation.
• Zero: Set when the result is 0.
• Carry: Set if an operation resulted in a carry (addition) into or borrow
(subtraction) out of a high-order bit. Used for multiword arithmetic
operations.
• Equal: Set if a logical compare result is equality.
• Overflow: Used to indicate arithmetic overflow.
• Interrupt Enable/Disable: Used to enable or disable interrupts.
• Supervisor: Indicates whether the processor is executing in supervisor or user
mode. Certain privileged instructions can be executed only in supervisor
mode, and certain areas of memory can be accessed only in supervisor mode.