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

I/O subsystem

Chapter 3, Processor Elements, introduced two broad categories of I/O architecture: memory-mapped I/O and port-mapped I/O. The pros and cons of each of these approaches were significant in the early days of PCs when the number of physical address lines limited the total processor memory space to a 1 MB range. Modern processor architectures are capable of addressing a far larger memory range, typically in the tens of gigabytes. A consequence of this address space expansion is the ready availability of address regions for use in I/O interfaces. Modern 32-bit and 64-bit general-purpose processors employ memory-mapped I/O for most of their interface requirements.

Sophisticated modern processors usually implement a memory controller within the processor chip, interfacing directly with DDR memory modules. Most other I/O performed by these processors is offloaded to one or more external integrated circuits, typically referred to as a chipset. The term chipset is commonly...