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 6: Specialized Computing Domains

Most computer users are, at least superficially, familiar with key performance-related attributes of personal computers and smart digital devices, such as processor speed and random-access memory (RAM) size. This chapter explores the performance requirements of computing domains that tend to be less directly visible to users, including real-time systems, digital signal processing, and graphics processing unit (GPU) processing.

We will examine the unique computing features associated with each of these domains and review some examples of modern devices implementing these concepts.

After completing this chapter, you will be able to identify application areas that require real-time computing and you will understand the uses of digital signal processing, with an emphasis on wireless communication. You will also understand the basic architecture of modern GPUs and will be familiar with some modern implementations of components in the computing...