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

Exercises

  1. Consider the addition of two signed 8-bit numbers (that is, numbers in the range -128 to +127) where one operand is positive and the other is negative. Is there any pair of 8-bit numbers of different signs that, when added together, will exceed the range -128 to +127? This would constitute a signed overflow. Note: We're only looking at addition here because, as we've seen, subtraction in the 6502 architecture is the same as addition with the right operand's bits inverted.
  2. If the answer to Exercise 1 is "no," this implies the only way to create a signed overflow is to add two numbers of the same sign. If an overflow occurs, what can you say about the result of performing XOR between the most significant bit of each operand with the most significant bit of the result? In other words, what will be the result of the expressions, left(7) XOR result(7) and right(7) XOR result(7)? In these expressions, (7) indicates bit 7, the most significant bit...