Chpm3 Flashcards
The central processing unit (CPU)
(also known as a microprocessor or processor) is central to all modern computer systems (including tablets and smartphones). The CPU is very often installed as an integrated circuit on a single microchip. The CPU has the responsibility for the execution or processing of all the instructions and data in a computer application.
CPU consist of
Control unit
Arithmetic and logic unit ALU
Register and buses
The von Neumann architecture had the following main nove
ompute
features (none of which were avaitable in computers prior to the mid-1940s)
the concept of a central processing unit (CPU or processor)
* the CPU was able to access the memory directly
» computer memories could store programs as well as data
stored programs were made up of instructions which could be executed in sequential order
Arithmetic & Logic Unit (ALU)
allows the required arithmetic (e.g. +, - and shifting) or logic (e.g. AND, OR) operations to be carried out while a program is being run; it is possible for a computer to have more than one ALU to carry out specific functions. Multiplication and division are carried out by a sequence of addition, subtraction and left or right logical shift operations.
Control u it
reads an instruction from memory. The address of the location where the instruction can be found is stored in the Program Counter (PC). This instruction is then interpreted using the Fetch-Decode-Execute cycle (see later in this section). During that process, signals are generated along the control bus to tell the other components in the computer what to do. The control unit ensures synchronisation of data flow and program instructions throughout the computer. A
system clock
is used to produce timing signals on the control bus to ensure this vital synchronisation takes place - without the clock the computer would simply crash!
The ram holds
The RAM holds all the data and programs needed to be accessed by the CPU. The RAM is often referred to as the Immediate Access Store (IAS). The CPU takes data and programs held in backing store (e.g. a hard disk drive) and puts them into RAM temporarily. This is done because read/write operations carried out using the RAM are considerably faster than read/write operations to backing store; consequently, any key data needed by an application will be stored temporarily in RAM to considerably speed up operations.
Registered
Registers can be general or special purpose. We will only consider the special purpose registers.
CIR current instruction register
this register stores the current instruction being decoded and executed
ACC accumslotst
this register is used when carrying out ALU calculations; it stores data temporarily during the calculations
MAR memory address register
this register stores the address of the memory location currently being read from or written to
MDR memory data register
this register stores data which has just been read from memory or data which is about to be written to memory
PC program counter
this register stores the address where the next instruction to be read can be found
What are the three buses
Control bus
Address bus
Data bus
Partition
The computer memory is made up of a number of partitions, each partition consists of an address and it’s contenteds
The address in partitions
The address will uniquely identify every location in the memory and the contents will be the binary value stored in each location
Let us now considerate examples of how the MAR and MDR registers can be use when carrying out a read and write operation to and from memory:
the address of location 1111 0001 to be read from is first written into the
MAR (memory address register):
read signal’ is sent to the computer memory
» the contents of memory location 1111 0001 are then put into the MDR (memory data register):
Now let us now consider the WRITE operation. Again, we will use the memory section shown in Table 3.2. Suppose this time we want to show how the value 1001 0101 was written into memory location 1111 1101:
» the data to be stored is first written into the MDR (memory data register):
this data has to be written into location with address: 1111 1101: so this
address is now written into the MAR:
finally, a write signal’ is sent to the computer memory and the value 10010101 will then be written into the correct memory location.
Input and output devices
They are the main method of entering data into and getting data out of computer systems.
Input devices
Input devices convert external data into a form the computer can understand and can then process (e.g. keyboards, touch screens and microphones).
Output devices
Output devices show the results of computer processing in a human understandable form (e.g. printers, monitors and loudspeakers).
System busses
(yetem) buses are used in computers as parallel transmission components; each the von the bus transmits one bit of era ta. heal ate three common buses used in the von Neumann architecture known as: address bus, data bus and control bus.
System busses
(yetem) buses are used in computers as parallel transmission components; each the von the bus transmits one bit of era ta. heal ate three common buses used in the von Neumann architecture known as: address bus, data bus and control bus.
Address bus
As the name suggests, the address bus carries addresses throughout the computer system. Between the CPU and memory, the address bus is unidirectional (i.e, bits can travel in one direction othe a this prevents addresses being carried back to the CPU, which would ee tin undesirable feature.
The wider the bus
The more memory locations that can be directly addressed at any given time