COMPUTER SYSTEM

ARCHITECTURE

Computer Organization Vs Computer

Architecture
Computer organization
Is concerned with how hardware components
operate and are connected to form a computer
system.
The various components are assumed to be in place
and the task is to investigate the organization
structure as to verify that they perform the intended
operations.

Computer Organization Vs Computer

Architecture cont..
Computer architecture
Deals with the structure and behavior of a computer
including the information formats ,the instruction set
and various techniques used for memory addressing.
It also deals with the specifications of various
functional modules such as processors and memories.
The computer architecture is often referred to as
Instruction set design and the other aspects of
computer design are called implementation.

 Old view of computer architecture:

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) design
i.e. decisions regarding:
registers, memory addressing, addressing modes,
instruction operands, available operations, control
flow instructions, instruction encoding
Real computer architecture:
Specific requirements of the target machine
Design to maximize performance within constraints: cost,
power, and availability
Includes ISA, microarchitecture, hardware

Defining Computer Architecture

Defining Computer Architecture

Computer Architecture
Computer Architecture =Instruction Set Architecture
+
Machine Organization

Instruction Set Architecture

Portion of the computer that is visible to the programmer.
Refer to the actual programmer visible instruction set.
It serves as the boundary between the software and the
hardware.
Eg. DLX , MIPS, ARM, PowerPC etc.

Instruction Set Architecture examples

General purpose RISC architectures:
MIPS,PowerPC,SPARC
Embedded RISC processors:
ARM,Hitachi,MIPS-16,Thumb
Older architectures:
VAX,80x86,IBM 360/370
MIPS used successfully in desktop, servers and embedded
applications.

Instruction Set Architecture (subset of

Computer Arch.)
... the attributes of a [computing]
system as seen by the programmer,
i.e. the conceptual structure and
functional behavior, as distinct from
the organization of the data flows and
controls the logic design, and the
physical implementation.

Amdahl,
Blaaw, and Brooks, 1964

Instruction Set:a Critical Interface

The instruction set architecture (ISA) serves

as the boundary between the software and
hardware.
How the machine looks to a programmer.
software
instruction set

hardware

Basic structure of a single processor

computer

Basic structure of a single processor

computer cont..
It consists of an input unit which accepts or reads the list of
instructions to solve a problem (a program)and the data relevant
for the problem.
It has memory or storage unit in which the procedure, data and
intermediate results are stored .
An arithmetic and logic unit (ALU)where arithmetic and logic
operations are performed.
An output unit which displays or prints the results.

Basic structure of a single processor

computer cont..
A control unit which interprets the instructions stored in the
memory and carries them out.
The combination of ALU and Control unit is called as Central
processing unit(CPU) or Processing element(PE).
A PE with its own memory is called a Computing
element(CE).
This structure is known as Von Neumann architecture
proposed by John Von Neumann

Basic structure of a single processor

computer cont..
In this architecture a program is first stored in the memory.
The PE retrieves one instruction of this program at a time
,interprets it and executes it.
The operation of this computer is thus sequential.
At a time the PE can execute only one instruction.

Basic structure of a single processor

computer cont..
The speed of this computer is thus limited by the speed at
which a PE can retrieve instructions and data from memory
and the speed at which it can process the retrieved data.
To increase the speed of processing of data one may connect
many sequential computers to work together
Such a computer which consists of interconnected sequential
computers which cooperatively execute a single program to
solve a problem is called Parallel computer

Basic structure of a single processor

computer cont..
Rapid developments in electronics led to the emergence of PEs
which can process over 500 million instructions per second
and cost only $500.
Thus it is economical to construct parallel computers which
use around 4000 such PEs to carry out a trillion instructions
per second and cost only $100 assuming 50% efficiency.
Difficulty is in perceiving parallelism and developing software
environment which will enable application programs to utilize
this potential parallel processing power.

The need for High speed computing

Many applications use computing speeds in the billion
operations per second range.
Some examples are:
Numerical simulation of the behavior of physical
systems.
High performance graphics-particularly
visualization and animation.
Database mining for strategic decision making.
Image and video database search.
Bioinformatics etc.

How we can increase the speed of

computers?
One method of increasing the speed of computer is to
build the PE using faster semiconductor components.
For eg. early supercomputers such as Cray-XMP
used emitter coupled logic circuits which cost most
and dissipated considerable heat.
The rate of growth of speed using better device
technology has been slow.

How we can increase the speed of

computers cont..
The rapid increase in speed has been primarily due to
improved architecture of computers in which the working
of different units is overlapped and they cooperate to solve
the problem.
For eg. While the processor is computing, data
which may be needed later could be fetched from
memory and simultaneously an I/O operation can
be going on.
Such an overlap of operations is achieved by
using software and hardware features.

How we can increase the speed of

computers cont..
Besides overlapping operations of various units of a
computer ,the processing unit itself may be designed
to overlap operations of successive instructions.
For eg. , an instruction execution can be broken up
into five distinct tasks as shown in fig.1
Five successive instructions can be overlapped ,each
doing one of these tasks.

How we can increase the speed of

computers cont..

IF-Instruction Fetch
ID-Instruction Decode
Ex-Execute
MEM-Memory
Reference
WB-Write Back

How we can increase the speed of

computers cont..
The arithmetic unit itself may be designed to exploit
parallelism inherent in the problem.
An arithmetic operation can be broken down into several tasks
,for eg. Matching exponents ,shifting mantissa and aligning
them ,adding and normalizing.
The components of two arrays to be added can be streamed
through an adder and the four tasks can be performed
simultaneously on four different pairs of operands thereby
quadrupling the speed of addition.
This method is said to exploit temporal parallelism.

How we can increase the speed of

computers cont..
Another method is to have 4 adders in the CPU and add four
pairs of operands simultaneously.
This type of parallelism is called data parallelism.
Another method of increasing the speed of computation is to
organize a set of computers to work simultaneously and
cooperatively to carry out tasks in a program.

How we can increase the speed of computers

cont..
All these methods are called architectural methods which can be
summarized as:
Use parallelism in single processor.
Overlap execution of a number of instructions by
pipelining or by using multiple functional units.
Overlap operations of different units.
Increase the speed of arithmetic logic unit by exploiting
data and/or temporal parallelism.
Use parallelism in the problem.
Use number of interconnected processors to work
cooperatively to solve the problem.

Example parallel computers

MasPar MP 1100
CM2
CM5
Power series
Cray T3E series

Indias Parallel computers

PARAM 8000/8600/9000 ..
Flosolver Mark I/II/III/IV
PACE
ANUPAM etc..

Features of Parallel Computers

Higher speed is the main feature.
Besides that some other features are:
Better quality of solution
When arithmetic operations are distributed to many
computers ,each one does a smaller number of arithmetic
operations.
Thus rounding errors are lower when parallel computers
are used.
Better algorithms
The availability of many computers which can work
simultaneously leads to different algorithms which are not
relevant for purely sequential algorithms.

Features of Parallel Computers

Better storage distribution
Certain types of parallel computing systems provide much
larger storage which is distributed .
Access to the storage is faster in each computer.
This feature is of special interest in many applications such
as information retrieval and computer aided design.
Greater reliability.
In principle a parallel computer will work even if a
processor fails.
Parallel computers hardware and software can be built for
better fault tolerance.

END