The Architecture of a Computer

Presented by J. Lagrimas
Class learning goals
 To provide an overview of some of the big ideas and concepts
of computer science
 To give an understanding of what motivated the development
of these ideas
 Provide a sense of exciting current developments, and where
the future lies

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The origin of computers
 Where did computers come from?

 Why did computers emerge in the 1940s?

 How did computers differ from previous technologies for

computation?

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What is Ratiocination?
 Ratiocination , is the discipline that combines computation and
logical thinking
 To simplify it is the logic of computation. Computer operates
in bits as its data. The abstraction is 8 bits is 1 byte. 1000 byte
is a kilo byte…..and so on
 Every data in computer are then translated into an electronic
signal

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The Advantages of Device
 Speed- defined by Gordon Moore ( founder of Intel)
suggesting that the speed of the device doubles up every 18th
month. This is called the Moore’s Law
 Accuracy – follows the GIGO concept ( Garbage In Garbage
Out). Once the program or instruction is correct It would
produce the correct output
 Programmability – the ability of computer to follow
instruction
 Multitasking – the ability of the device to perform two or more
task parcel at a splice of a time (hyper threading)

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Common Disadvantages
 Impact on Labor Force
 A medium of Crime
 Ambiguity in Ethics
 Became the Catalyst of the bubble burst.com era ( The first
financial crisis caused by technological products)

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Charles Babbage
 Charles Babbage (1791-1871), British
 Motivated by the desire to reduce drudgery of
calculation, and to improve its accuracy
 “It is only by the mechanical fabrication of tables that
(computation) errors can be rendered impossible.”
 Was born in the steam age, when electronics
was in its infancy
 As a consequence, thought to create a mechanical, Charles Babbage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Babbag
steam-powered computing machine e_1860.jpg

 First machine was the Difference Engine, a

mechanical calculator
 This was partially realized
 Second machine was the Analytical Engine, a
programmable calculation device
Difference Engine
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:050114_2529_difference.j
pg

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Analytical Engine
 Jacquard loom (1801)
 Fabric patterns are encoded on punched
cards
 Each row corresponds to one row of the
fabric design
 Babbage was inspired by this idea of
abstracting the instructions away from
the physical device that realizes them
Jacquard loom
 The goal of the analytical engine was to blog.lib.umn.edu/hael0002/alternativemedia5413/2011/02/the-jacquard-
loom.html
abstract apart the instructions for
Punched cards used to
performing a computation program analytical
engine
 Hence, one machine could perform a wide en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engi
ne

range of computations
 That is, it could be programmed

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Ada Lovelace
 Born 1816, daughter of Lord Byron (famous romantic poet)
 A mathematical genius, worked with Babbage on Analytical
Engine
 Documented the Analytical Engine, but more importantly…
 Programmed Analytical Engine
 Though never realized, Ada developed a strong mental model of
how it works, and then developed programs, also in her head, that
ran on the machine.
 More impressively, these programs were recursive (re-running the
same computation, using the results from the previous run-through)
 Generally credited as being the world’s first computer
programmer

 She died age 36, from a painful, drawn-out battle with uterine
cancer.

 Watch:
 http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/creation-computer/ Ada Lovelace
 “Computing by Steam” starts at 4:04 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_lovelace.jpg

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Other Notable Person
 Thomas Watson (1920) credited for founding IBM
 Bill Gates and Paul Allen (1960) founded Microsoft
 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack (1960) founded Apple
Industry
 Larry Page and Servery Brin (1990) Founded Google)

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The Basic Architecture
 Architecture- the attributes of a system
 CPU- Central Processing Unit
 A. Control Unit – carries out basic instruction
 ALU – handles the arithmetic and logic unit
 Memory – hold data temporarily

 System Peripherals
 Input Devices
 Output Devices
 Storage Devices

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Personal Computer (PC) Anatomy

 Case or housing
 Embedded computers likely
not to have
 Power supply
 Motherboard
 CPU
 Memory
 Video and audio chipsets
 Networking
 I/O ports
 Hard disk
 Solid state sometimes now
 Peripherals
 CD or DVD drive

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Computer Block Diagram

CPU
Disk Hard
controller drive,
Video
CD/DVD
Memory Display
chipset

Audio
USB, Speakers
chipset
Serial, Ports
Keyboard, Networking
Mouse, etc. chipset Internet
Bus

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CPU
 The ‘brain’ of your computer
 Carries out the instructions of your
program
 Essential components: CPU
 Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
 Does arithmetic and logic functions
 Add and subtract (sometimes
ALU
multiply and divide)
 Bit-wise logic:
 AND, OR, NOT, XOR CU
 Bit shift (left or right)
 Control Unit (CU)
 Controls the actions inside the CPU Clock Register
 Registers s
 Temporary locations to store data, Instructions Data
instructions, and addresses
 Clock Memory
 Synchronizes operations in the CPU

Adapted from Fundamentals of Computer Organization and Architecture, M. Abd-El-Barr, H. El-Rewini, John Wiley and Sons, 2005
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Memory

 Stores program instructions and data

Memory (8-bit)
 Each location has
Address
0x10FE 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
an ‘address’
 Each location stores
the information as ‘bits’
 Binary ____its

0x10FF 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0
 Zero or one
 8 bits is one byte
 Information is ‘coded’
 Memory is ‘written’ or ‘read’

0x1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0xFFFF
Bit 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

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Hardware Trends
 Every year or two the following approximately
double:
 Amount of memory in which to execute programs
 Amount of secondary storage (such as disk storage)
 Used to hold programs and data over the longer term
 Processor speeds
 The speeds at which computers execute their programs

16
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Software
 The intermediary between you (the user) and the hardware
 Operating system (OS) see the next page
 Windows, OS X, Linux
 Application programs
 End-user applications
 Word processor, solid modeler, etc.
 Mathcad, Matlab, etc.
 Application development software
(programming languages)
 C, Matlab (sort of), Lab View (sort of), Python, Java,
FORTRAN, etc.

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 Rogue Software – any software that runs without the user
consent that does damage to a file or programs

 Cloud Computing Software – Specific software whose

platform uses internet connectivity to share files and
information

 Brain Computing – A significant type of software that has the

ability and capacity of thinking like a human brain by
searching pattern for an answer

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Operating System (OS)

 A program that:
 Acts as an intermediary between
hardware and application software
 Provides a consistent, stable way for
applications to interact with hardware
 APIs, so you don’t have to do it all
yourself
 Examples:
 Windows
 Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_placement.svg

 OS X

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Primary Functions of an O.S
 Booting – the process of restarting a computer. Each time you
start a computer a kernel is loaded. Kernel is a small programs
under system 32 bit that manages memory devices, maintains
memory clocks and starts applications

 Provides Interface – controls hot to accept data and process

instructions. Also tells hot the information is loaded. There are
two forms of interface ( Command Line or GUI)

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 Managing a Program – Operating System supports and
manage applications either by a single task or multiple task

 Managing Memory – is the optimize use of a random access

memory . The OS allocates a portion of storage medium
usually in hard disk to function as an additional ram

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Other Software Types
 Application Software / Groupware - software that is designed
and written to perform a specific task form computer users. It
adapts the computer to the task user wants done
 Rogue Software – any software that runs without the user
consent that does damage to file or the pc’s programs
 Cloud Computing Software – specific software whose
platform uses internet connectivity to share files and
information
 Brain Computing – a significant type of software that has the
ability and capacity of thinking like a human brain by
searching for pattern in answer
  

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