Computer Design

Lecturer: Dr S.W. Moore (swm11@cl.cam.ac.uk)

No. of lectures: 16  

Introduction.

A brief look at the history of stored program computers, including accumulator machines and introducing stack machines.

RISC design approach (ARM microprocessor as the key example).

RISC design philosophy and the ARM instruction set. ARM tools, code examples and the calling convention. Coprocessor and operating system support. Memory management and caches. Executing instructions: an algorithmic viewpoint. The ARM pipeline. Extending the ARM pipeline: including load and branch delay slots.

Structure and control of a CPU.

Hard-wired control, microprogrammed control, asynchronous control.

Memory, buses and I/O.

Memory and I/O bus structures. Synchronous bus, asynchronous bus. Arbitration, interrupts.

A brief look at the CISC design approach.

(Intel x86 as the key example.) Bridging the semantic gap with CISC. Overview of Intel x86 instruction set.

Conclusions.

Future directions.

Information on the Web:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Teaching/Lectures/computerdesign/

Recommended books:

Patterson, D.A. & Hennessy, J.L. (1994). Computer Organisation and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface. Morgan Kaufmann.

Hennessy, J.L. & Patterson, D.A. (1990 or 1996). Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. Morgan Kaufmann.

Faber, S.B. (1989). VLSI RISC Architecture and Organisation. New York: Marcel Dekker.