Themes

1. Computer hardware: main functions.

C.Hardware - The data bus is the electrical connection between various parts of the computer, managing the flow of data between the processing hardware and the rest of the computer. The processing hardware puts data in the form of electrical signals on the bus to direct the other devices. It accepts data from the bus to determine the state of these devices and acquire data that they may provide. Some computers have additional specialized buses for faster connections to certain devices.

2. Special hardware for processing data. Steps needed for a computer processor to perform its work.

Processing hardware - implements the instructions encoded into software. A special hardware device called as instruction register or instruction counter contains the address of a location in the computer’s memory that holds the instruction a computer needs to start its operation.

Turning on the computer activates this instruction. Thereafter, the processor execute instructions sequentially in the order they exist in memory unless it encounters an instruction that resets the instruction counter to a different memory address.

Steps needed for a computer processor to perform its work:

3. Measuring processor power.

Clock speed (тактовая частота) is the most common measure of processor power. An electronic circuit called a clock emits a regular electronic beat or pulse that synchronizes the operation of the processor.

With each pulse, the processor performs one operation. Some operations, particularly the execution of complex instructions, may take several pulses. The term “hertz” is used to refer to the number of pulses c clock produces per second.

Prefix	Meaning
Kilo	One thousand
Mega	One million
Giga	One billion
Tera	One trillion
Peta	One quadrillion

4. Word length, bus width, speed of arithmetic.

Word Length, bus width - The number of bits a computer can process at one time. It is usually at least 32 for PC and 64 for organisational computers. The Bus Width refers to the number of bits a computer can move at one time from one area of memory to another and is generally less than word length.

Speed of arithmetic - The flop (number of floating point operations per second) measures arithmetic power. Modern computers operate in the gigaflop to teraflop range.

5. Instruction set, speed of arithmetic, pipelining.

Speed of Arithmetic - The flop (number of floating point operations per second) measures arithmetic power. Modern computers operate in the gigaflop to teraflop range.

Instruction Speed - MIPS (millions of instructions per second) measures instruction speed for a given processor type. Instruction speed usually varies directly with the clock speed.

Instruction Set - The number of different instructions a processor can decode and execute

Pipelining - A processor’s ability to overlap the fetching, decoding, and executing of different instructions.

6. Pipelining, parallel processing, examples of specialized processors.

Pipelining - A processor’s ability to overlap the fetching, decoding, and executing of different instructions.

Parallel processing - Uses two or more processors in one computer. These processors either share a common bus and devices or operate more independently.

Specialized processors - They respond to a limited set of commands to perform highly specialized tasks. Because their instruction have been “hard wired” into their chips and chips have been optimized for their tasks, they can perform these tasks more quickly than general-purpose processors.

Voice processors can translate sound-wave inputs into sound groups called phonemes and then into written words. They can increase the intelligibility and amplification of voice communications. They can also digitize and reproduce audio stored in computer files.