COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN
The Hardware/Software Interface
Chapter 1
Introduction: Computer Abstractions
and Technology
§1.1 Introduction
The Computer Revolution
◼ Progress in computer technology
◼ Underpinned by domain-specific accelerators
◼ Makes novel applications feasible
◼ Computers in automobiles
◼ Cell phones
◼ Human genome project
◼ World Wide Web
◼ Search Engines
◼ Computers are pervasive
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 2
§1.1 Introduction
The Computer Revolution
◼ Progress in computer technology
◼ Underpinned by domain-specific accelerators
◼ Makes novel applications feasible
◼ Computers in automobiles
◼ Cell phones
◼ Human genome project
◼ World Wide Web
◼ Search Engines
◼ Computers are pervasive
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 3
Classes of Computers
◼ Personal computers
◼ General purpose, variety of software
◼ Subject to cost/performance tradeoff
◼ Server computers
◼ Network based
◼ High capacity, performance, reliability
◼ Range from small servers to building sized
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 4
Classes of Computers
◼ Supercomputers
◼ Type of server
◼ High-end scientific and engineering
calculations
◼ Highest capability but represent a small
fraction of the overall computer market
◼ Embedded computers
◼ Hidden as components of systems
◼ Stringent power/performance/cost constraints
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 5
The PostPC Era
The number manufactured per year of tablets and smart phones, which reflect the
PostPC era, versus personal computers and traditional cell phones. Smart phones
represent the recent growth in the cell phone industry, and they passed PCs in 2011.
Tablets are the fastest growing category, nearly doubling between 2011 and 2012. Recent
PCs and traditional cell phone categories are relatively flat or declining.
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 6
The PostPC Era
◼ Personal Mobile Device (PMD)
◼ Battery operated
◼ Connects to the Internet
◼ Hundreds of dollars
◼ Smart phones, tablets, electronic glasses
◼ Cloud computing
◼ Warehouse Scale Computers (WSC)
◼ Software as a Service (SaaS)
◼ Portion of software run on a PMD and a
portion run in the Cloud
◼ Amazon and Google
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 7
What You Will Learn
◼ How programs are translated into the
machine language
◼ And how the hardware executes them
◼ The hardware/software interface
◼ What determines program performance
◼ And how it can be improved
◼ How hardware designers improve
performance
◼ What is parallel processing
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 8
Understanding Performance
◼ Algorithm
◼ Determines number of operations executed
◼ Programming language, compiler, architecture
◼ Determine number of machine instructions executed
per operation
◼ Processor and memory system
◼ Determine how fast instructions are executed
◼ I/O system (including OS)
◼ Determines how fast I/O operations are executed
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 9
§1.2 Seven Great Ideas in Computer Architecture
Seven Great Ideas
◼ Use abstraction to simplify design
◼ Make the common case fast
◼ Performance via parallelism
◼ Performance via pipelining
◼ Performance via prediction
◼ Hierarchy of memories
◼ Dependability via redundancy
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 10
§1.3 Below Your Program
Below Your Program
◼ Application software
◼ Written in high-level language
◼ System software
◼ Compiler: translates HLL code to
machine code
◼ Operating System: service code
◼ Handling input/output
◼ Managing memory and storage
◼ Scheduling tasks & sharing resources
◼ Hardware
◼ Processor, memory, I/O controllers
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 11
Levels of Program Code
◼ High-level language
◼ Level of abstraction closer
to problem domain
◼ Provides for productivity
and portability
◼ Assembly language
◼ Textual representation of
instructions
◼ Hardware representation
◼ Binary digits (bits)
◼ Encoded instructions and
data
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 12
§1.4 Under the Covers
Components of a Computer
The BIG Picture ◼ Same components for
all kinds of computer
◼ Desktop, server,
embedded
◼ Input/output includes
◼ User-interface devices
◼ Display, keyboard, mouse
◼ Storage devices
◼ Hard disk, CD/DVD, flash
◼ Network adapters
◼ For communicating with
other computers
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 13
Opening the Box
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 14
Inside the Processor (CPU)
◼ Datapath: performs operations on data
◼ Control: sequences datapath, memory, ...
◼ Cache memory
◼ Small fast SRAM memory for immediate
access to data
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 15
Abstractions
The BIG Picture
◼ Abstraction helps us deal with complexity
◼ Hide lower-level detail
◼ Instruction set architecture (ISA)
◼ The hardware/software interface
◼ Application binary interface
◼ The ISA plus system software interface
◼ Implementation
◼ The details underlying and interface
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 17
A Safe Place for Data
◼ Volatile main memory
◼ Loses instructions and data when power off
◼ Non-volatile secondary memory
◼ Magnetic disk
◼ Flash memory
◼ Optical disk (CDROM, DVD)
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 18
Networks
◼ Communication, resource sharing,
nonlocal access
◼ Local area network (LAN): Ethernet
◼ Wide area network (WAN): the Internet
◼ Wireless network: WiFi, Bluetooth
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 19
§1.5 Technologies for Building Processors and Memory
Technology Trends
◼ Electronics
technology
continues to evolve
◼ Increased capacity
and performance
◼ Reduced cost
DRAM capacity
Year Technology Relative performance/cost
1951 Vacuum tube 1
1965 Transistor 35
1975 Integrated circuit (IC) 900
1995 Very large scale IC (VLSI) 2,400,000
2013 Ultra large scale IC 250,000,000,000
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 20
Semiconductor Technology
◼ Silicon: semiconductor
◼ Add materials to transform properties:
◼ Conductors
◼ Insulators
◼ Switch
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 21
Manufacturing ICs
◼ Yield: proportion of working dies per wafer
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 22
Intel® Core 10th Gen
◼ 300mm wafer, 506 chips, 10nm technology
◼ Each chip is 11.4 x 10.7 mm
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 23
Integrated Circuit Cost
Cost per wafer
Cost per die =
Dies per wafer Yield
Dies per wafer Wafer area Die area
1
Yield =
(1+ (Defects per area Die area/2))2
◼ Nonlinear relation to area and defect rate
◼ Wafer cost and area are fixed
◼ Defect rate determined by manufacturing process
◼ Die area determined by architecture and circuit design
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 24
What Is Computer Architecture?
Computer Architecture: The science and art of
designing, selecting, and interconnecting hardware
components and designing the hardware/software
interface to create a computing system that meets
functional, performance, energy consumption, cost,
and other specific goals.
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What Is Computer Architecture?
Computer Architecture: The term architecture is
used here to describe the attributes of a system as
seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual
structure and functional behavior as distinct from
the organization of the dataflow and controls, the
logic design, and the physical implementation.
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What Is Computer Architecture?
▪ Computer Architecture
▪ Instruction Set Architecture & Computer Organization
▪ Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)
▪ WHAT the computer does (logical view)
▪ Computer Organization
▪ HOW the ISA is implemented (physical view)
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Current State of Architecture
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Current State of Architecture
Advance of Semiconductors: “Moore’s Law”
Gordon Moore, Founder of Intel
▪ 1965: since the integrated
circuit was invented, the
number of transistors/inch2
in these circuits roughly
doubled every year; this
trend would continue for
the foreseeable future
▪ 1975: revised - circuit
complexity doubles every
18 months
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Current State of Architecture
Leveraging Moore’s Law Trends
From increasing circuit density to performance:
▪ More transistors = ↑ opportunities for exploiting parallelism
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The Importance of Architecture
▪ We design smarter and smarter processors
▪ Process technology gives us about 20%
performance improvement per year
▪ Until 2004, performance grew at about
40% per year
▪ The gap is due to architecture! (and compilers)
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Computer Performance
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Power
▪ Clock speed is the biggest contributor to power
▪ Chip manufactures (Intel, esp.) pushed clock
speeds very hard in the 90s and early 2000s.
▪ Doubling the clock speed increases power by 2-8x
▪ Clock speed scaling is essentially finished.
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Power
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§1.7 The Power Wall
Power Trends
◼ In CMOS IC technology
Power = Capacitive load Voltage 2 Frequency
×30 5V → 1V ×1000
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 35
Reducing Power
◼ Suppose a new CPU has
◼ 85% of capacitive load of old CPU
◼ 15% voltage and 15% frequency reduction
Pnew Cold 0.85 (Vold 0.85)2 Fold 0.85
= = 0.85 4
= 0.52
Cold Vold Fold
2
Pold
◼ The power wall
◼ We can’t reduce voltage further
◼ We can’t remove more heat
◼ How else can we improve performance?
Chapter 1 — Computer Abstractions and Technology — 36
Important Trends
▪ Historical contributions to performance:
▪ Better processes (faster devices) ~20%
▪ Better circuits/pipelines ~15%
▪ Better organization/architecture ~15%
▪ In the future, bullet-2 will help little, and bullet-1 will
eventually disappear!
Pentium P-Pro P-II P-III P-4 Itanium Montecito
Year 1993 95 97 99 2000 2002 2005
Transistors 3.1M 5.5M 7.5M 9.5M 42M 300M 1720M
Clock Speed 60M 200M 300M 500M 1500M 800M 1800M
Moore’s Law in action
At this point, adding transistors
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to a core yields little benefit
What’s Next: Parallelism
▪ You probably own a multi-processor
▪ They provide some performance, but it’s hard
to Fully exploit (parallel programming !)
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What’s Next: Parallelism
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