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A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the most important processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations. This role contrasts with that of external components, such as main memory and I/O circuitry, and specialized coprocessors such as graphics processing units (GPUs).
Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
In computing, a cache is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. A cache hit occurs when the requested data can be found in a cache, while a cache miss occurs when it cannot. Cache hits are served by reading data from the cache, which is faster than recomputing a result or reading from a slower data store; thus, the more requests that can be served from the cache, the faster the system performs.
The Intel 8088 microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range are unchanged, however. In fact, according to the Intel documentation, the 8086 and 8088 have the same execution unit (EU)—only the bus interface unit (BIU) is different. The 8088 was used in the original IBM PC and in IBM PC compatible clones.
In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer, also known as its machine code. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions that implement the higher-level machine code instructions or control internal finite-state machine sequencing in many digital processing components. While microcode is utilized in Intel and AMD general-purpose CPUs in contemporary desktops and laptops, it functions only as a fallback path for scenarios that the faster hardwired control unit is unable to manage.
In a computer, the memory address register (MAR) is the CPU register that either stores the memory address from which data will be fetched to the CPU registers, or the address to which data will be sent and stored via system bus.
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an implementation of that ISA.
The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data. It is often contrasted with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and data share the same memory and pathways. This architecture is often used in real-time processing or low-power applications.
The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM 7030 Stretch, by a factor of three. With performance of up to three megaFLOPS, the CDC 6600 was the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600.
The MESI protocol is an invalidate-based cache coherence protocol, and is one of the most common protocols that support write-back caches. It is also known as the Illinois protocol due to its development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Write back caches can save considerable bandwidth generally wasted on a write through cache. There is always a dirty state present in write-back caches that indicates that the data in the cache is different from that in the main memory. The Illinois Protocol requires a cache-to-cache transfer on a miss if the block resides in another cache. This protocol reduces the number of main memory transactions with respect to the MSI protocol. This marks a significant improvement in performance.
In the history of computer hardware, some early reduced instruction set computer central processing units used a very similar architectural solution, now called a classic RISC pipeline. Those CPUs were: MIPS, SPARC, Motorola 88000, and later the notional CPU DLX invented for education.
The DLX is a RISC processor architecture designed by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, the principal designers of the Stanford MIPS and the Berkeley RISC designs (respectively), the two benchmark examples of RISC design.
A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. In computer architecture, registers are typically addressed by mechanisms other than main memory, but may in some cases be assigned a memory address e.g. DEC PDP-10, ICT 1900.
In computer science, computer engineering and programming language implementations, a stack machine is a computer processor or a virtual machine in which the primary interaction is moving short-lived temporary values to and from a push down stack. In the case of a hardware processor, a hardware stack is used. The use of a stack significantly reduces the required number of processor registers. Stack machines extend push-down automata with additional load/store operations or multiple stacks and hence are Turing-complete.
The instruction cycle is the cycle that the central processing unit (CPU) follows from boot-up until the computer has shut down in order to process instructions. It is composed of three main stages: the fetch stage, the decode stage, and the execute stage.
A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs have a hierarchy of multiple cache levels, with different instruction-specific and data-specific caches at level 1. The cache memory is typically implemented with static random-access memory (SRAM), in modern CPUs by far the largest part of them by chip area, but SRAM is not always used for all levels, or even any level, sometimes some latter or all levels are implemented with eDRAM.
In electronics, computer science and computer engineering, microarchitecture, also called computer organization and sometimes abbreviated as μarch or uarch, is the way a given instruction set architecture (ISA) is implemented in a particular processor. A given ISA may be implemented with different microarchitectures; implementations may vary due to different goals of a given design or due to shifts in technology.
A modified Harvard architecture is a variation of the Harvard computer architecture that, unlike the pure Harvard architecture, allows memory that contains instructions to be accessed as data. Most modern computers that are documented as Harvard architecture are, in fact, modified Harvard architecture.
This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices.
The Hack Computer is a theoretical computer design created by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken and described in their book, The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles. In using the term “modern”, the authors refer to a digital, binary machine that is patterned according to the von Neumann architecture model.
References
- ↑ #Mett, Percy (1990), Mett, Percy (ed.), "Hardware", Introduction to Computing, London: Macmillan Education UK, pp. 117–162, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-08039-7_5, ISBN 978-1-349-08039-7 , retrieved 2024-01-15
- ↑ Dharshana, K.S; Balasubramanian, Kannan; Arun, M. (2016). Encrypted computation on a one instruction set architecture. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/ICCPCT.2016.7530376. ISBN 978-1-5090-1277-0 . Retrieved 2024-01-15.
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