PROF. DANIEL ERNSTFEBRUARY 28 T H , 2011

COMPUTER HARDWARE

CS 146The Big Picture in Computer Science

2

What would you say is the greatest invention of the 20th century?

(ABC News poll, 1999)

Top responses % Computers 30Automobile 12Electricity 9Television 9Telephone/Telecommunications 7Airplane 4Medicines/Vaccinations 4

“The transistor; without it, the XBOX would probably be the size of a city.”

- nate66, some xbox forum

???

3

Introduction of Microelectronics

Miniaturization of immense proportions Transistor: This is an abbreviated combination of

the words "transconductance" or "transfer", and "varistor". The device logically belongs in the varistor family, and has the transconductance or transfer impedance of a device having gain, so that this combination is descriptive.— Bell Telephone Laboratories — Technical Memorandum (May 28, 1948)

Integrated Circuit: Miniaturized electronic circuit manufactured in a thin layer of semiconductor material.

4

Moore’s Law

5

Moore’s Law

6

The Power of Miniaturization

EDSAC 1 (1949)~ 500 OPs

Pentium 4 (2002)~ 12 GFLOPs

24,000,000 times faster

7

A picture is worth 1000 words…

(or a billion transistors)

8

Managing Complexity with Abstraction

Designers deal with the extreme complexity of microprocessors by using abstraction. Focus only on 1-2 levels of abstraction at a time Similar to OOD

Don’t need to know how the module works, just that it does work. And the interface

9

Levels of Abstraction in a Computer System

Apps

O/S

Arch

mArch

Logic

Digital

Analog

Devices

Physics

software

hardware

Applications – Generic Software

Operating System – Controlling Software

Architecture – HW/SW Interface

marchitecture – High-level organization

Digital Logic – Building-block Modules

Digital Circuits – Continuous Discrete

Analog Circuits – Fun with Electricity

Devices – Transistors, Capacitors, etc.

Physical Properties – Electrons, Ions, etc.