Computer

Systems
Organization
A computer system is made up of various components. The components can be hardware
or software.

Overview
The computer systems we build today feature
programmable processing units which interact with a number
of devices, each controlled by an I/O controller, and
using memory.

Clearly, this picture is an oversimplification. Each CPU can have

one or more cores. Memory itself islayered (caches, main,
secondary). Machines themselves are networked, giving the
appearance of one large machine made up of smaller ones.
Devices are roughly classified into input devices, output
devices and storage devices. Examples include:
Input Devices

Keyboard
Mouse
Light Pen
Joystick
Joyswitch
Trackball
Tablet
Track Pad
Surface
Digitizer
Microphone
Voice Recognizer

Output Devices

Screen
Television
Printer (2D or 3D)
Plotter
Film Recorder
Projector
Hologram Generator
Robot Arm
Speaker
Headphones
Voice Synthesizer
Card Punch

Storage Devices

Disk Drive
CD Drive
DVD Drive
USB Flash Drive
Solid State Drive (SSD)
Tape Drive

Scanner
Fingerprint Scanner
Card Reader
Paddle
Game Controller
Data Glove
Wand
Video Camera
Eye Tacker
Motion Sensor
Exercise: What other devices are you aware of?

Layers of Organization
Modern computer systems have a layered organization, which each
layer either using the services of, or being physically built from,
entities on the level directly below it.
Layer

People

Application Programs

Application
Programmers

System Utility Programs

System Programmers

Domain

Software

Operating System
I/O System (BIOS)
Computer System

Computer Engineers

Hardware

CPU

Computer Architects

Memories, Logic Circuits, Flip-Flops,

Gates

Logic Designers

Transistors, Diodes, Resistors, Power

Supplies

Materials Scientists

Exercise: Research firmware. How does firmware fit into this

table?

Topics in Computer System

Organization
In no particular order, the field of computer organization
encompasses:
Information theory
Encoding and decoding
CPU operation
Machine language
Assembly language
Storage devices
Caches
Operating systems

 Concurrency
Processes
Threads
Networks
Context switching
Files
System-level I/O
Virtual memory
Compilation
Program optimization
Linking and loading