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

RISC-V extensions

The instruction set described earlier in this chapter is named RV32I, which stands for the RISC-V 32-bit integer instruction set. Although the RV32I ISA provides a complete and useful instruction set for many purposes, it lacks several functions and features available in other processors such as x86 and ARM.

The RISC-V extensions provide a mechanism for adding capabilities to the base instruction set in an incremental and compatible manner. Implementors of RISC-V processors can selectively include extensions in a processor design to optimize tradeoffs between chip size, system capability, and performance. These flexible design options are also available to developers of low-cost FPGA-based systems. We'll see more about implementing a RISC-V processor in an FPGA later in this chapter. The major extensions we will cover now are named M, A, C, F, and D, and we'll mention some other available extensions.

The M extension

The RISC-V M extension adds integer...