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

Chapter 8: Performance-Enhancing Techniques

The fundamental aspects of processor and memory architectures discussed in previous chapters enable the design of a complete and functional computer system. However, the performance of such a system would be poor compared to most modern processors without the addition of features to increase the speed of instruction execution.

Several performance-enhancing techniques are employed routinely in processor and system designs to achieve peak execution speed in real-world computer systems. These techniques do not alter what the processor does in terms of program execution and data processing; they just help get it done faster.

After completing this chapter, you will understand the value of multilevel cache memory in computer architectures and the benefits and challenges associated with instruction pipelining. You'll also understand the performance improvement resulting from simultaneous multithreading and the purpose and applications...