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

Virtualization tools

In this section, we will look at several widely available open source and commercial tools that implement different forms of processor virtualization. This information may be useful as a starting point when initiating a project involving virtualization.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a free, open source type 2 hypervisor from Oracle Corporation. Supported host operating systems include Windows and several Linux variants. One or more guest operating systems on a single host can simultaneously run Windows and a variety of Linux distributions.

Guest OS licensing requirements

For organizations and individuals to remain in compliance with copyright laws, operating systems requiring licensing, such as Windows, must be properly licensed even when running as guest operating systems.

Individual virtual machines can be started, stopped, and paused under the control of the interactive VirtualBox management program or from the command line. VirtualBox has the ability...