Computers: How They Work

What is a Computer Components of Computer Worlds First Computers 4004 First single chip Microprocessor Transistors in integrated circuits (ICs) Review of MOSFET transistors (how they work and how they are made) Basic building blocks from transistors NANDS, NORS, Latches, Adders Simple components using basic building blocks Integrating the components to create a 4-bit Microprocessor Scaling up and Moores Law Machine Code and the processors Instruction Set Software Memory types (ROM, DRAM, SRAM, FLASH) Mother Board Hard Drive Keyboard Monitor The Mouse http://www.labsanywhere.net/SlideManager/slides/Computers_rev3.ppt
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Demonstrations

PC Mother Boards Plain and Etched Wafers Silicon Ingot ICs with lids removed Masks Memory
Hard Drive Magnetic Tape Punch Cards CDs

Cathode Ray Tube Monitor LCDs Keyboard CCD chips

What is a Computer?
A

machine that stores instructions and operates on information/data. A calculator that executes a stored program (sequence of instructions)

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu

Jacquards Loom
Circa 1804

Charles Babbages first attempt at a Computer The Analytical Engine, c. 1822

Designed

to use Jacquard punch cards to store and run a program Mathematician, Augusta Ada Lovelace, created programs Steam Powered 25,000 parts 15 tons and 8 feet high Never completed

http://concise.britannica.com

Difference Engine II
Designed

calculate polynomials and compute trig and log functions C. 1847 Crank operated
Now on Display at the Computer History Museum! http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/

to

Herman Holleriths Census Tabulator c. 1890

Census recording performed in six weeks in 1890 Census recording took 7 years in 1880

Also on Display at the Computer History Museum!

Holeriths Tabulator
Data

entered on punch cards Card reader used mercury to close a circuit which would advance a dial by one tick

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/census-tabulator.html

ENIAC in 1946
First electronic computer Designed for the Army $500,000 >17,000 Vacuum Tubes 150 KW of power Filled multiple rooms (700 sq. ft) Soldered and constructed by hand by the University of Penn.

IBMs Accounting Machine Introduced in 1949

Punch cards used to store Fortran programs up until about 1980.

 Individual

Parts Manual hand wiring

IBM 402

The birth of the integrated circuit (IC)

1947- using silicon as a transistor is discovered 1960- TI put 10 transistors on one piece of silicon Used in Apollo Space Program lower power and weight

Intel 4004 The Worlds first Microprocessor, made in 1971 Computer on a chip! It had 2300 transistors and ran at 740 KHz. It could execute 45 instructions.

Could execute 96,000 instructions per second

As powerful as the ENIAC

Wheres the chip?

Microprocessor
A

logic machine that can execute a computer program. A Central Processing Unit (CPU) integrated into a single chip (i.e. constructed as an integrated circuit or IC on a single piece of Silicon)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit

Busicom

In 1965 Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years.

Moores Law

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/

Wikipedia

micron = 10-6 meters

The feature size of an integrated circuit is indicated by the width of a "wire," measured in microns (one micron is one millionth of a meter). Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits (4th Edition)

Components of a Computer
Processor Memory Input/Output
Processor

Memory (ROM, RAM, Registers, Cache)

Output (Monitor, speakers, USB Drive, Printer, DSL, Hard Drive)

Input (Keyboard, Mouse USB Drive, DSL, Touchscreen, Microphone, Hard Drive)

USB Universal Serial Bus

DSL Digital Subscriber Line

4004 Processor

http://en.wikipedia.org

Whats Inside a basic CPU? (Central Processing Unit)

ALU

(Arithmetic Logic Unit) Instruction Decoder Program Counter Instruction Register Data Registers Accumulator (place for storing a sum) Clock for sequencing operations

CPUs are made from Transistors

Transistors are tiny switches that can open and close very quickly. A negative voltage will turn this transistor on.
http://www.answers.com

nMOS Transistor (n-channel)

A positive voltage will turn this transistor on.

http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca

Chips can have millions of transistors built on a small piece of silicon.

CMOS stands for Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. This means CMOS chips contain both pMOS and nMOS transistors.

http://www.britannica.com

Transistors are used to make logic gates

http://www.iclayoutonline.com

Making the Inverter Logic Gate

Making the Exclusive OR gate (XOR)

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits

Now what can be made with NAND, NOR, & XOR gates?
1-bit adder (Full Adder)

Multiplexer

A multiplexer selects one of many sources to send to the output.

http://users.ece.gatech.edu

1-Bit ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit)

Coming from the Instructions

http://www.cs.umd.edu/

4004 Processor

http://en.wikipedia.org

Cascading 1-bit ALU to get a 3-bit ALU

http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc311

Memory A Device that remembers a previous input.

Registers are the high speed memory on the CPU chip. These registers are used for storing data that is frequently needed.
Instructions are pre-fetched and stored in registers too so that they are ready when needed.

Registers

1-bit Latch (Flip Flop)

Static Ram and registers are constructed with this logic. The state of Q is retained as long as power is on.

http://www.cise.ufl.edu

Clocked Latch Also known as a D-Flip Flop

Cascading Flip Flops to build an N-bit register

Now we know how to add binary numbers and store binary data

Use

Flip Flops to store instructions which are coded as binary (base-2) numbers Use an ALU to add numbers together Scale this concept up to accommodate larger numbers Add more functionality to the ALU

Microinstructions are coded and stored as binary data

Microinstructions

are the controls that make the hardware operate Microinstructions are coded in 1s and 0s Microinstructions are unique to the processor (each processor has its own instruction set) The clock sequences operations and keeps operations in lock step

00011011 Add C, #1
To Registers A, B, C, and D

To avoid large decoder circuits, the codes are broken up into fields. In this example there are three fields, each field has dedicated decoding circuitry:
1. The command
2. The data to be used

http://webster.cs.ucr.edu

2 to 4 decoders

http://users.ece.gatech.edu

Software commands Hardware

C++ high level codes gets compiled/translated into low level machine codes
14: while (amt2 <= amt1) 004015BB fld dword ptr [ebp-8] 004015BE fcomp dword ptr [ebp-4] 004015C1 fnstsw ax 004015C3 test ah,41h 004015C6 je main+70h (004015f0) 15: { 16: amt1 = amt1 + 100; 004015C8 fld dword ptr [ebp-4] 004015CB fadd dword ptr [__real@4@4005c800000000000000 (0046f0a4)] 004015D1 fstp dword ptr [ebp-4] 17: amt2 = amt2 + 0.05*amt2; 004015D4 fld dword ptr [ebp-8] 004015D7 fld dword ptr [ebp-8] 004015DA fmul qword ptr [__real@8@3ffaccccccccccccd000 (0046f098)] 004015E0 faddp st(1),st 004015E2 fstp dword ptr [ebp-8] 18: year++; 004015E5 mov eax,dword ptr [ebp-14h] 004015E8 add eax,1 004015EB mov dword ptr [ebp-14h],eax 19: }

while (amt2 <= amt1) { amt1 = amt1 + 100; amt2 = amt2 + 0.05*amt2; year++; }

Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle
Fetch

an Instruction:

Fetch instruction at address stored in address register Increment Program Counter Load the Instruction Register with this Instruction

 Decode

Decode the Instruction Fetch the operands

Execute

ALU or other logic performs the operation The result is then written to memory or to a register.

Memory Hierarchy

http://www.surriel.com/lectures/hierarchy.gif

Cache Memory

http://content.answers.com

SRAM
Static

Random Access Memory Retains data in memory as long as power is on Uses flip flops (4-6 transistors each) Fast but more expensive due to more chip realestate needed for each memory location compared to DRAM Used for cache memory Access time 10 nanoseconds

DRAM and SDRAM

Dynamic RAM
Dynamic refers to the need to refresh the data

Synchronous DRAM
(Timing of memory chip is synchronized with CPU clock)

Data is stored as electrical charge in a capacitors Capacitors will discharge requiring that memory be refreshed every few milliseconds. This slows down the DRAM Dense therefore least expensive form of memory
http://www.electronics.dit.ie/staff/tscarff/memory/ram.htm

10 byte DRAM
The word random means bytes can be accessed randomly. Data access is not sequential like a magnetic tape.

http://www.cse.scu.edu

SIMM & DIMM

Single

In-line memory module Dual In-line memory module These cards are DRAMS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIMM

ROM of three memory locations, Diodes each word of memory is 3 bits

Read Only Memory Data contents can not

be changed Data retained even when power is off Manufactured with the data Used for booting up computer and loading Operating System Device Driver software
http://www.compeng.dit.ie

Flash Memory
Type of EEPROM (Electrically Eraseable Programmable Read Only Memory) Using Floating Gate Transistors to store bits Non-volatile (power not needed to maintain data) MP3 Players are flash drives with extra circuitry to decode data to analog music signals

http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/16383/16383.html

Hard Drive 50-80 GBytes

Data
http://www.metallurgy.utah.edu/ stored magnetically Permanent Storage, Non-volatile memory Fast - Spins 4,500 to 12,000 rpm Dense and Inexpensive Data easily erased and rewritten Iron Oxide or very thin magnetic film applied with a sputtering process stores magnetic data

Actuator Actuator Arm Platter Spindle

Read/Write head

Multiple Platters
Head 20-50 nm from platter surface A human hair is 100 nm

Read-Write Head
How Stuff Works

wikipedia

www.hddtech.co.uk

The voice-coil actuator controls the movement of the actuator arm

Positions the read/write heads Similar to a speaker! Uses a coil and permanent magnet Converts electrical signals into mechanical movement In this picture, magnet has been moved to the left during disassembly to expose the coil Coil moves freely under the magnet

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/over.html

Small Tolerances
5-80

Mbytes/sec media transfer rate Scaled up to size of Boeing, tolerances are equivalent to traveling at 65 mph at an altitude of 1.5 mm
As an analogy, a magnetic head slider flying over a disk surface with a flying height of 25 nm with a relative speed of 20 meters/second is equivalent to an aircraft flying at a physical spacing of 0.2 m at 900 kilometers/hour. This is what a disk drive experiences during its operation.

Magnetic Storage Systems Beyond 2000, George C. Hadjipanayis

A Computer is much more than a processor Processor Intel Core2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB) Video Cards 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX Memory 2GB* Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs Hard Drive: 500GB* 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache Optical Drive Single Drive: Bluray Disc Drive (BD/DVD/CD burner w/double layer BD write Monitors 20 inch E207WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

http://www.dell.com