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

Introducing virtualization

In the domain of computer architecture, virtualization refers to the use of hardware and software to create an emulated version of an environment in which a piece of software runs, as opposed to the real environment in which the code normally expects to run.

We have already looked at one form of virtualization in some depth: virtual memory. Virtual memory uses software, with supporting hardware, to create an environment in which each running application functions as if it has exclusive access to the entire computer, including all the memory it requires at the addresses it expects. Virtual address ranges used by a program can even be the same as those in use by other currently running processes.

Systems using virtual memory create multiple sandboxed environments in which each application runs without interference from other applications, except in competition for shared system resources. In the virtualization context, a sandbox is an isolated environment...