Book Image

Modern Computer Architecture and Organization

By : Jim Ledin
Book Image

Modern Computer Architecture and Organization

By: Jim Ledin

Overview of this book

Are you a software developer, systems designer, or computer architecture student looking for a methodical introduction to digital device architectures but overwhelmed by their complexity? This book will help you to learn how modern computer systems work, from the lowest level of transistor switching to the macro view of collaborating multiprocessor servers. You'll gain unique insights into the internal behavior of processors that execute the code developed in high-level languages and enable you to design more efficient and scalable software systems. The book will teach you the fundamentals of computer systems including transistors, logic gates, sequential logic, and instruction operations. You will learn details of modern processor architectures and instruction sets including x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V. You will see how to implement a RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA board and how to write a quantum computing program and run it on an actual quantum computer. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of modern processor and computer architectures and the future directions these architectures are likely to take.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Fundamentals of Computer Architecture
8
Section 2: Processor Architectures and Instruction Sets
14
Section 3: Applications of Computer Architecture

x86 architecture and instruction set

For the purpose of this discussion, the term x86 refers to the 16-bit and 32-bit instruction set architecture of the series of processors that began with the Intel 8086, introduced in 1978. The 8088, released in 1979, is functionally very similar to the 8086, except it has an 8-bit data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 8088 was the central processor in the original IBM PC.

Subsequent generations of this processor series were named 80186, 80286, 80386, and 80486, leading to the term "x86" as shorthand for the family. Subsequent generations dropped the numeric naming convention and were given the names Pentium, Core, i Series, Celeron, and Xeon.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor manufacturing company that competes with Intel, has been producing x86-compatible processors since 1982. Some recent AMD x86 processor generations have been named Ryzen, Opteron, Athlon, Turion, Phenom, and Sempron.

For the most...