Computer Design

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

No. of lectures + practicals: 16 + 3

This course is a prerequisite for Comparative Architectures (Part II) and Introduction to VLSI (Part II).

The first eight lectures are concerned with the hardware/software interface and cover the programmer's model of the computer. The last eight lectures look at hardware implementation issues at a register transfer level.

Introduction.

Introduction to the course and some background history.

Historic machines.

EDSAC versus Manchester Mark I.

Introduction to RISC processor design

and the ARM instruction set.

ARM tools and code examples.

Operating system support

including memory hierarchy and management.

Intel x86 instruction set.

Intel code examples.

Java Virtual Machine.

Executing instructions.

An algorithmic viewpoint.

Basic processor hardware.

Pipelining and data paths.

Extending the ARM pipeline

including load and branch delay slots.

Memory hierarchy.

Caching etc.

Buses.

Internal communication pathways.

Communication interfaces and devices.

Control structures.

State machines and microcode.

Data-flow and comments on future directions.

Recommended books:

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

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

Pointers to sources of more specialist information are included in the lecture notes.