EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

SSM INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COURSE MATERIAL

The study of the structure, behavior and design of computers

- John P Hayes

Prepared by
KARTHIK. S -

KARTHIK. S

Approved BY
HOD(ECE) -

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

SYLLABUS:

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

UNIT 1 FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTER DESIGN

-

And now for something completely different.

Monty Pythons Flying Circus

1. INTRODUCTION:
The technical term for a PC is micro data processor. Computers have their roots 300
years back in history. Mathematicians and philosophers like Pascal, Leibnitz, Babbage
and Boole made the foundation with their theoretical works. Only in the second half of
this century was electronic science sufficiently developed, to make practical use of their
theories.
The modern PC has roots back to USA in the 1940's. Among the many scientists, I like to
remember John von Neumann (1903-57). He was a mathematician, born in Hungary. We
can still use his computer design today. A great majority of the computers of our daily
use are known as general purpose machines. These are machines that are built with no
specific application in mind, but rather are capable of performing computation needed by
a diversity of applications. These machines are to be distinguished from those built to
serve (tailored to) specific applications. The latter are known as special purpose
machines.
Definitions:
It may also be defined as the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware
components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals
It is the arrangement of computer components and their relationships.
Computer architecture is the theory behind the design of a computer. In the same way as
a building architect sets the principles and goals of a building project as the basis for the
draftsman's plans, so too, a computer architect sets out the computer architecture as a
basis for the actual design specifications.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

2. Architecture Vs Organization:
Architecture is the set of attributes visible to the programmer
Examples: Does this processor have a multiply instr.?
How does the compiler create object code?
How best is memory handled by the O/S?
Organization is how features are implemented
Examples:
Is there a hardware multiply unit or is it done by repeated addition?
What type of memory is used to store the program codes?

Figure 1 Computer Architecture

A general purpose computer is like an island that helps span the gap between the desired
behavior (application) and the basic building blocks (electronic devices) using COA.
3. Basic Structure of Computer Hardware & Software:
The basic functional structure of a computer is shown in the figure.

Figure 2 Basic computer structure

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Figure 3 Basic block diagram of a computer

The functional units of a computer are Arithmetic and logic unit, Control unit, Memory unit
Input unit & Output unit.
Arithmetic & Logic Unit:
It is the unit of the system where most of the computer operations are carried out.
For example if we perform any arithmetic or logical operation we have to fetch the required
operands from the memory into processor and in processor the required operation is carried out
by ALU.
The result may be stored in memory or retained in the registers for immediate use.
Control Unit:
It is the unit which co-ordinates the operations of ALU, Memory, Input and output units.
It is the nerve center of the computer system that sends control signals to other units.
Data transfer between computer and memory is controlled by control unit through timing signals.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Memory Unit:
The function of the memory unit is to store program and data.
Memory is organized in the form of memory words. Each memory word will have unique
address.
Memory words can be accessed sequentially or randomly.
Memory words accessed randomly is referred as Random Access Memory. The time required to
access all the words is fixed.
In sequential access memory the words are accessed one by one. The fourth memory word is
accessed after accessing 0, 1, 2 and 3rd memories only.
Output unit:
The main purpose of the output unit is to send the processed results to external world.
Commonly used output units are Printers and monitors.
Input unit:
These devices are used for accepting input information such as program and data from external
world or users.
Commonly used input devices are Keyboard, Mouse and joystick.
Basic Operational Steps:

The following are the basic steps for execution of program,

Program is stored in the memory through the input unit.

Program counter will point to the first instruction of a program at the starting of the
execution of the program.

Contents of PC are transferred to MAR and a read control signal is sent to memory.

After memory access time is completed the requested word is read out of the memory and
placed in the MDR.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Next the contents of the MDR are transferred to IR and now the instruction is ready to be
executed.

If the instruction involves any operation to be performed by ALU, it is necessary to

obtain the operands.

If the operands resides in the memory, it has to be fetched by sending its address to
MAR and initiating a read cycle.

When the operand has been read from the memory into MDR, it is transferred from MDR
to ALU.

After fetching one or more operands in this way ALU can perform the desired operation.

If the result of the operation is to be stored in the memory then result is sent to MDR.

The address of location where the result is to be stored is transferred to MAR and write
cycle is initiated.

Somewhere during the execution of the current instruction the contents of the PC is
incremented and the PC contains address of the next instruction to be executed.

Figure 4 CPU with memory and I/O

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

As soon as the execution of the current instruction is completed, a new instruction fetch
may be started.

Bus Structure:
The group of lines that connect CPU and the peripherals is termed as BUS. The three types of
buses are Address bus, Data bus and Control bus. Typically, a bus consists of 50 to hundreds of
separate lines. On any bus the lines are grouped into three main function groups: data, address,
and control. There may also be power distribution lines for attached modules. The Address bus is
unidirectional because it carries only the address information from CPU to Memory. The Data
bus is bidirectional since it carries data to and from the CPU. In conventional systems multiple
buses were used but in modern systems single bus structure is used as shown in the figure.

Figure 5 Basic Bus structure

The single bus structure reduces the complexity of the bus connections, but it allows only single
bus transfer between the units at one time.
Basic computer functions:
The main functions performed by any computer system are,
o
o
o
o

Fetch
Decode
Execute
Store

The basic function performed by a computer is execution of a program, which consists of a set of
instructions stored in memory. The processor does the actual work by executing instructions

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Figure 6 State diagram of fetch and execute cycle

specified in the program. In the simplest form, instruction processing consists of two steps: the
processor reads (fetches) instructions from memory one at a time and executes each instruction.
The processing required for a single instruction is called an instruction cycle. An instruction
cycle is shown below:
The state diagram below shows a more detailed look at the instruction cycle:

Figure 7 Detailed state diagram of instruction cycle

4. The Changing Face of Computing:

In the 1960s, the dominant form of computing was on large mainframes, machines
costing millions of dollars and stored in computer rooms with multiple operators
overseeing their support.
In 1970s birth of the minicomputer, a smaller sized machine initially focused on
applications in scientific laboratories
The 1980s rise of the desktop computer based on microprocessors, in the form of both
personal computers and workstations.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

The 1990s emergence of the Internet and the world-wide web, the first successful
handheld computing devices (personal digital assistants or PDAs), and the emergence of
high-performance digital consumer electronics,
These changes have set the stage for a dramatic change in how we view computing,
computing applications, and the computer markets at the beginning of the millennium.

Figure 8 Growth in microprocessor performance

These changes in computer use have led to three different computing markets each
characterized by different applications, requirements, and computing technologies.
Desktop Computing:
Desktop computing spans from low-end systems that sell for under $1,000 to high end,
heavily-configured workstations that may sell for over $10,000.
the desktop market tends to be driven to optimize price-performance
Servers:
The role of servers to provide larger scale and more reliable file and computing services
The emergence of the world-wide web accelerated tremendous growth in demand for
web servers and web-based services.
For servers, different characteristics are

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Availability.

Scalability.

Lastly,

efficient throughput.(transactions per minute or

web pages served per second)

Embedded Computers:
Computers lodged in other devices where the presence of the computer is not
immediately obvious
Examples--microwaves and washing machines, palmtops, cell phones, and smart cards
Characteristics :

performance need at a minimum price,

need to minimize memory

need to minimize power

The Task of a Computer Designer:

The task the computer designer faces is a complex one: Determine what attributes are important
for a new machine, and then design a machine to maximize performance while staying within
cost and power constraints. This task has many aspects, including instruction set design,
functional organization, logic design, and implementation. The implementation may encompass
integrated circuit design, packaging, power, and cooling. Optimizing the design requires
familiarity with a very wide range of technologies, from compilers and operating systems to
logic design and packaging.
In the past, the term computer architecture often referred only to instruction set design. Other
aspects of computer design were called implementation, often insinuating that implementation is
uninteresting or less challenging.. The architects or designers job is much more than instruction
set design, and the technical hurdles in the other aspects of the project are certainly as
challenging as those encountered in doing instruction set design. This challenge is particularly
acute at the present when the differences among instruction sets are small and at a time when
there are three rather distinct applications areas.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Computer architects must design a computer to meet functional requirements as well as price,
power, and performance goals. Often, they also have to determine what the functional
requirements are, and this can be a major task.
5. Technology Trends:
The main computer architecture goals are

Rapid technological changes

Functional requirements

Cost & Price

Power

Performance

If an instruction set architecture is to be successful, it must be designed to survirapid changes in

computer technology. To plan for the evolution of a machine, the designer must be especially
aware of rapidly occurring changes in implementation technology. Four implementation
technologies, which change at a dramatic pace, are critical to modern implementations:
Integrated circuit logic technology Transistor density increases by about 35% per year,
quadrupling in somewhat over four years. Increases in die size are less predictable and slower,
ranging from 10% to 20% per year. The combined effect is a growth rate in transistor count on a
chip of about 55% per year. Device speed scales more slowly, as we discuss below.
Semiconductor DRAM (dynamic random-access memory)Density increases by between
40% and 60% per year, quadrupling in three to four years. Cycle time has improved very slowly,
decreasing by about one-third in 10 years. Bandwidth per chip increases about twice as fast as
latency decreases. In addition, changes to the DRAM interface have also improved the
bandwidth
Magnetic disk technology recently, disk density has been improving by more than 100% per
year, quadrupling in two years. Prior to 1990, density increased by about 30% per year, doubling
in three years. It appears that disk technology will continue the faster density growth rate for
some time to come. Access time has improved by one-third in 10 years.
Network technology Network performance depends both on the performance of switches and
on the performance of the transmission system, both latency and bandwidth can be improved,

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

though recently bandwidth has been the primary focus. For many years, networking technology
appeared to improve slowly:
6. Cost, Price and their Trends:
Although there are computer designs where costs tend to be less importantspecically
supercomputerscost-sensitive designs are of growing importance: more than half the PCs sold
in 1999 were priced at less than $1,000, and the average price of a 32-bit microprocessor for an
embedded application is in the tens of dollars. Indeed, in the past 15 years, the use of technology
improvements to achieve lower cost, as well as increased performance, has been a major theme
in the computer industry.
Price is what you sell a nished good for, and cost is the amount spent to produce it, including
overhead.
The Impact of Time, Volume, Commodification:
The cost of a manufactured computer component decreases over time even without major
improvements in the basic implementation technology. The underlying principle that drives costs
down is the learning curve manufacturing costs decrease over time. The learning curve itself
is best measured by change in the percentage of manufactured devices that survives the testing
procedure. Whether it is a chip, a board, or a system, designs that have twice the yield will have
basically half the cost.
Volume is a second key factor in determining cost. Increasing volumes affect cost in several
ways. First, they decrease the time needed to get down the learning curve, which is partly
proportional to the number of systems (or chips) manufactured. Second, volume decreases cost,
since it increases purchasing and manufacturing efficiency. As a rule of thumb, some designers
have estimated that cost decreases about 10% for each doubling of volume. Also, volume
decreases the amount of development cost that must be amortized by each machine, thus
allowing cost and selling price to be closer. We will return to the other factors inuencing selling
price shortly.
Commodities are products that are sold by multiple vendors in large volumes and are essentially
identical. Virtually all the products sold on the shelves of grocery stores are commodities, as are
standard DRAMs, disks, monitors, and keboards. In the past 10 years, much of the low end of the
computer business has become a commodity business focused on building IBM-compatible PCs.
There are a variety of vendors that ship virtually identical products and are highly competitive.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Cost of an Integrated Circuit:
Integrated circuit costs are becoming a greater portion of the cost that varies between machines,

Figure 9 Wafer chopped into dies

especially in the high-volume, cost-sensitive portion of the market. Thus computer designers
must understand the costs of chips to understand the costs of current computers. Although the
costs of integrated circuits have dropped exponentially, the basic procedure of silicon
manufacture is unchanged: A wafer extremely is still tested and chopped into dies that are
packaged (see Figure above). Thus the cost of a packaged integrated circuit is

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

wafer yield accounts for wafers that are completely bad and so need not be tested. --is a
parameter that corresponds inversely to the number of masking levels, a measure of
manufacturing complexity, critical to die yield.

Example:
Find the number of dies per 30-cm wafer for a die that is 0.7 cm on a side.
Solution:
2

The total die area is 0.49 cm thus,

But this only gives the maximum number of dies per wafer. The critical question is, What is the
fraction or percentage of good dies on a wafer number, or the die yield? A simple empirical
model of integrated circuit yield, which assumes that defects are randomly distributed over the
wafer and that yield is inversely proportional to the complexity of the fabrication process, leads
to the following:

For todays multilevel metal CMOS processes, a good estimate is = 4.0

Example:
Find the die yield for dies that are 1 cm on a side and 0.7 cm on a side, assuming a defect density
of 0.6 per cm2
The total die areas are 1 cm2 and 0.49 cm2. For the larger die the yield is

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Cost Versus PriceWhy They Differ and By How Much:

Costs of components may conne a designers desires, but they are still far from representing
what the customer must pay. Cost goes through a number of changes before it becomes price,
and the computer designer should understand how a design decision will affect the potential
selling price. For example, changing cost by $1000 may change price by $3000 to $4000.
Without understanding the relationship of cost to price the computer designer may not
understand the impact on price of adding, deleting, or replacing components.

Figure 10 Cost performance

Direct costs refer to the costs directly related to making a product. These include labor
costs, purchasing components, scrap (the left over from yield), and warranty

Gross margin, the companys overhead that cannot be billed directly to one product.

Indirect cost- It includes the companys research and development (R&D), marketing,
sales, manufacturing equipment maintenance, building rental, cost of financing, pretax
,profits, and taxes.

Average selling pricethe money that comes directly to the company for each product
sold.

List price-that companies offer volume discounts, lowering the average selling price.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Measuring and Reporting Performance:
When we say one computer is faster than another, what do we mean? The user of a desktop
machine may say a computer is faster when a program runs in less time, while the computer
center manager running a large server system may say a computer is faster when it completes
more jobs in an hour. The computer user is interested in reducing response timethe time
between the start and the completion of an eventalso referred to as execution time.
The manager of a large data processing center may be interested in increasing throughputthe
total amount of work done in a given time.
In comparing design alternatives, we often want to relate the performance of two
different machines, say X and Y. The phrase X is faster than Y is used here to mean that the
response time or execution time is lower on X than on Y for the given task. In particular, X is n
times faster than Y will mean

Since execution time is the reciprocal of performance, the following relationship holds:

The phrase the throughput of X is 1.3 times higher than Y signifies here that the number of
tasks completed per unit time on machine X is 1.3 times the number completed on Y. Because
performance and execution time are reciprocals, increasing Performance decreases execution
time.
Measuring Performance:
The most straightforward dentition of time is called wall-clock time, response time, or elapsed
time, which is the latency to complete a task, including disk accesses, memory accesses,
input/output activities, operating system overheadeverything. With multiprogramming the
CPU works on another program while waiting for I/O and may not necessarily minimize the
elapsed time of one program. Hence we need a term to take this activity into account. CPU time
recognizes this distinction and means the time the CPU is computing, not including the time
waiting for I/O or running other programs. (Clearly the response time seen by the user is the

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

elapsed time of the program, not the CPU time.) CPU time Can be further divided into the CPU
time spent in the program, called user CPU time, and the CPU time spent in the operating system
performing tasks requested by the program, called system CPU time.
There are ve levels of programs used in such circumstances, listed below in decreasing order of
accuracy of prediction.
Real applications
Real applications have input, output, and options that a user can select when
running the program.
Real applications often encounter portability problems arising from dependences
on the operating system or compiler.
Modified (or scripted) applications
Applications are modified for two primary reasons: to enhance portability or to
focus on one particular aspect of system performance.
For example, to create a CPU-oriented benchmark, I/O may be removed or
restructured to minimize its impact on execution time.
Kernels--Kernels are best used to isolate performance of individual features of a machine to
explain the reasons for differences in performance of real programs.

Toy benchmarks
Toy benchmarks are typically between 10 and 100 lines of code and produce a
result the user already knows before running the toy program.
example Puzzle, and Quicksort
Synthetic benchmarks

Synthetic benchmarks try to match the average frequency of operations and

operands of a large set of programs.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

7. Dependability:
The Infrastructure providers offer Service Level Agreement (SLA) or Service Level
Objectives (SLO) to guarantee that their networking or power services would be
dependable.
Systems alternate between 2 states of service with respect to an SLA:
1. Service accomplishment, where the service is delivered as specified in SLA
2. Service interruption, where the delivered service is different from the SLA
Failure = transition from state 1 to state 2
Restoration = transition from state 2 to state 1
The two main measures of Dependability are Module Reliability and Module Availability.
Module reliability is a measure of continuous service accomplishment (or time to failure) from a
reference initial instant
1. Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) measures Reliability
2. Failures In Time (FIT) = 1/MTTF, the rate of failures
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) measures Service Interruption
Mean Time between Failures (MTBF) = MTTF+MTTR
Module availability measures service as alternate between the 2 states of accomplishment and
interruption Module availability = MTTF / (MTTF + MTTR)
8. Quantitative Principles of Computer Design:
While designing the computer, the advantage of the following points can be exploited to enhance the
performance

Parallelism:
It is one of most important methods for improving performance.
One of the simplest ways to do this is through pipelining ie, to over lap the instruction Execution
to reduce the total time to complete an instruction sequence.

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

Parallelism can also be exploited at the level of detailed digital design.
Set- associative caches use multiple banks of memory that are typically searched n parallel.
Carry look ahead which uses parallelism to speed the process of computing.
Principle of locality:
Program tends to reuse data and instructions they have used recently. The rule of thumb is that
program spends 90 % of its execution time in only 10% of the code. With reasonable good
accuracy, prediction can be made to find what instruction and data the program will use in the
near future based on its accesses in the recent past
Focus on the common case:
While making a design trade off, favor the frequent case over the infrequent case. This principle
applies when determining how to spend resources, since the impact of the improvement is higher
if the occurrence is frequent.
Amdahls Law:

Amdahls law is used to find the performance gain that can be obtained by improving some
portion or a functional unit of a computer Amdahls law defines the speedup that can be gained
by using a particular feature.
Speedup is the ratio of performance for entire task without using the enhancement when possible
to the performance for entire task without using the enhancement. Execution time is the
reciprocal of performance. Alternatively, speedup is defined as the ratio of execution time for
entire task without using the enhancement to the execution time for entire task using the
enhancement when possible. Speedup from some enhancement depends on two factors:
i.

The fraction of the computation time in the original computer that can be converted to
take advantage of the enhancement. Fraction enhanced is always less than or equal to
Example: If 15 seconds of the execution time of a program that takes 50 seconds in
total can use an enhancement, the fraction is 15/50 or 0.3

ii.

ii. The improvement gained by the enhanced execution mode; ie how much faster the
task would run if the enhanced mode were used for the entire program. Speedup

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET

EC6009 ADVANCED COMPUTER ARCHITETCURE

iii.

Enhanced is the time of the original mode over the time of the enhanced mode and is
always greater than 1.

The Processor performance Equation:

Processor is connected with a clock running at constant rate. These discrete time events are
called clock ticks or clock cycle. CPU time for a program can be evaluated:

KARTHIK. S

DEPARTMENT OF ECE - SSMIET