Modern Computer Architecture and Organization

Learn x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures and the design of smartphones, PCs, and cloud servers

Jim Ledin 지음

Packt(GCO Science) 2020년 04월 30일 출간

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▶Book Description
Are you a software developer, systems designer, or computer architecture student looking for a methodical introduction to digital device architectures but overwhelmed by their complexity? This book will help you to learn how modern computer systems work, from the lowest level of transistor switching to the macro view of collaborating multiprocessor servers. You'll gain unique insights into the internal behavior of processors that execute the code developed in high-level languages and enable you to design more efficient and scalable software systems.

The book will teach you the fundamentals of computer systems including transistors, logic gates, sequential logic, and instruction operations. You will learn details of modern processor architectures and instruction sets including x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V. You will see how to implement a RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA board and how to write a quantum computing program and run it on an actual quantum computer. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of modern processor and computer architectures and the future directions these architectures are likely to take.

▶What You Will Learn
- Get to grips with transistor technology and digital circuit principles
- Discover the functional elements of computer processors
- Understand pipelining and superscalar execution
- Work with floating-point data formats
- Understand the purpose and operation of the supervisor mode
- Implement a complete RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA
- Explore the techniques used in virtual machine implementation
- Write a quantum computing program and run it on a quantum computer

▶Key Features
- Understand digital circuitry with the help of transistors, logic gates, and sequential logic
- Examine the architecture and instruction sets of x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V processors
- Explore the architecture of modern devices such as the iPhone X and high-performance gaming PCs

▶Who This Book Is For
This book is for software developers, computer engineering students, system designers, reverse engineers, and anyone looking to understand the architecture and design principles underlying modern computer systems from tiny embedded devices to warehouse-size cloud server farms. A general understanding of computer processors is helpful but not required.

목차

▶TABLE of CONTENTS
▷ Section 1: Fundamentals of Computer Architecture
-Chapter 1: Introducing Computer Architecture
-Chapter 2: Digital Logic
-Chapter 3: Processor Elements
-Chapter 4: Computer System Components
-Chapter 5: Hardware-Software Interface
-Chapter 6: Specialized Computing Domains
▷ Section 2: Processor Architectures and Instruction Sets
-Chapter 7: Processor and Memory Architectures
-Chapter 8: Performance-Enhancing Techniques
-Chapter 9: Specialized Processor Extensions
-Chapter 10: Modern Processor Architectures and Instruction Sets
-Chapter 11: The RISC-V Architecture and Instruction Set
▷ Section 3: Applications of Computer Architecture
-Chapter 12: Processor Virtualization
-Chapter 13: Domain-Specific Computer Architectures
-Chapter 14: Future Directions in Computer Architectures
Answers to Exercises

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▶What this book covers
- Chapter 1, Introducing Computer Architecture, begins with a brief history of automated computing devices and describes the significant technological advances that drove leaps in capability. This is followed by a discussion of Moore's law, with an assessment of its applicability over previous decades and the implications for the future. The basic concepts of computer architecture are introduced in the context of the 6502 microprocessor.

- Chapter 2, Digital Logic, introduces transistors as switching elements and explains their use in constructing logic gates. We will then see how flip-flops and registers are developed by combining simple gates. The concept of sequential logic, meaning logic that contains state information, is introduced, and the chapter ends with a discussion of clocked digital circuits.

- Chapter 3, Processor Elements, begins with a conceptual description of a generic processor. We will examine the concepts of the instruction set, register set, and instruction loading, decoding, execution, and sequencing. Memory load and store operations are also discussed. The chapter includes a description of branching instructions and their use in looping and conditional processing. Some practical considerations are introduced that lead to the necessity for interrupt processing and I/O operations.

- Chapter 4, Computer System Components, discusses computer memory and its interface to the processor, including multilevel caching. I/O requirements including interrupt handling, buffering, and dedicated I/O processors are described. We will discuss some specific requirements for I/O devices including the keyboard and mouse, the video display, and the network interface. The chapter ends with descriptive examples of these components in modern computer applications, including smart mobile devices, personal computers, gaming systems, cloud servers, and dedicated machine learning systems.

- Chapter 5, Hardware-Software Interface, discusses the implementation of the highlevel services a computer operating system must provide, including disk I/O, network communications, and interactions with users. This chapter describes the software layers that implement these features starting at the level of the processor instruction set and registers. Operating system functions, including booting, multiprocessing, and multithreading, are also described.

- Chapter 6, Specialized Computing Domains, explores domains of computing that tend to be less directly visible to most users, including real-time systems, digital signal processing, and GPU processing. We will discuss the unique requirements associated with each of these domains and look at examples of modern devices implementing these features.

- Chapter 7, Processor and Memory Architectures, takes an in-depth look at modern processor architectures, including the von Neumann, Harvard, and modified Harvard variants. The chapter discusses the implementation of paged virtual memory. The practical implementation of memory management functionality within the computer architecture is introduced and the functions of the memory management unit are described.

- Chapter 8, Performance-Enhancing Techniques, discusses a number of performanceenhancing techniques used routinely to reach peak execution speed in real-world computer systems. The most important techniques for improving system performance, including the use of cache memory, instruction pipelining, instruction parallelism, and SIMD processing, are the subjects of this chapter.

- Chapter 9, Specialized Processor Extensions, focuses on extensions commonly implemented at the processor instruction set level to provide additional system capabilities beyond generic data processing requirements. The extensions presented include privileged processor modes, floating-point mathematics, power management, and system security management.
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▶ Preface
This book presents the key technologies and components employed in modern processor and computer architectures and discusses how various architectural decisions result in computer configurations optimized for specific needs.

To understate the situation quite drastically, modern computers are complicated devices. Yet, when viewed in a hierarchical manner, the functions of each level of complexity become clear. We will cover a great many topics in these chapters and will only have the space to explore each of them to a limited degree. My goal is to provide a coherent introduction to each important technology and subsystem you might find in a modern computing device and explain its relationship to other system components.

I will not be providing a lengthy list of references for further reading. The Internet is your friend in this regard. If you can manage to bypass the clamor of political and social media argumentation on the Internet, you will find yourself in an enormous, cool, quiet library containing a vast quantity of accumulated human knowledge. Learn to use the advanced features of your favorite search engine. Also, learn to differentiate high-quality information from uninformed opinion. Check multiple sources if you have any doubts about the information you're finding. Consider the source: if you are looking for information about an Intel processor, search for documentation published by Intel.

By the end of this book, you will have gained a strong grasp of the computer architectures currently used in a wide variety of digital systems. You will also have developed an understanding of the relevant trends in architectural technology currently underway, as well as some possibly disruptive advances in the coming years that may drastically influence the architectural development of computing systems.

작가정보

저자(글) Jim Ledin

Jim Ledin is the CEO of Ledin Engineering, Inc. Jim is an expert in embedded software and hardware design, development, and testing. He is also accomplished in embedded system cybersecurity assessment and penetration testing. He has a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University and an M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. Jim is a registered professional electrical engineer in California, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and a Certified Penetration Tester (CPT).