BASICS OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS
A COMPUTER
➢ The idea of a single chip computer was around even as early as the 1950s
➢ By the end of the 1960s, things had changed and ic’s had the technology market.
➢ Intel released its 4-bit all-purpose chip, the Intel 4004 (108KHz), in 1971.
➢ In April 1972, Intel came up with the 8008, which was an 8-bit version.
➢ The first major break came with the introduction of the 8080 (by Intel) in 1974.
➢ The 8080 is generally considered to be the first truly usable microprocessor.
➢ The 8085 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Intel Corporation in 1976. 2
YEAR OF RELEASE OF X86 PROCESSORS
x86 processor Year of release
8085 1976
8086 1978
8088 1979
80186 1982
80286 1982
89386 1985
80486 1989
Pentium 1993
Pentium Pro 1995
Pentium -2 1997
Pentium-3 1999
Pentium-4 2004
Pentium-D 2005 3
Core-2 2006
Core-2 Quad 2007
PERSONAL COMPUTERS
• IBM produced the first PC in august 1981 using the 8088.
• It had 64 KB of RAM (expandable to 256 KB), a floppy disk drive
• In march 1983, the IBM PC –XT was released-it had a ‘hard disk’
• In august 1984 ,the PC-AT using the 80286 was released .
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THE BLOCK DIAGRAM OF A COMPUTER
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COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE BASICS
A COMPUTER HAS
• A CPU
• MEMORY
• I/O
ALL ARE INTERCONNECTED THROUGH A SYSTEM BUS
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SYSTEM BUSES
A bus is collection of signal wires which connect
between the components of the computer systems
• DATA BUS -Bi-directional
• ADDRESS BUS - Uni-directional
• CONTROL BUS -Has signals travelling in both
directions, and some signals
May be bi-directional as well
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THE PROCESSOR
• The processor or the microprocessor, is the component responsible for
controlling all the activity in the system.
• It performs the following three actions continuously.
✓Fetch an instruction from memory.
✓Decode the instruction.
✓Execute the instruction.
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PROCESSOR ACTIVITY (SYSTEM CLOCK)
System clock The execution cycle
• All the activities of the processor and buses are synchronized by a clock
• An execution cycle may require many clock periods.
• That is depends on the architectural features of the processor, as well as the complexity of
the instruction to be executed.
• An execution cycle also involves fetching instructions and data from memory.
• Obviously, the time for execution depends on the clock speed as well, i.e. A clock speed 9of
3GHz implies faster processing than a clock of 1GHz.
THE MEMORY
• The memory associated with a computer system includes the primary memory as
well as secondary memory.
• Memory is organized as bytes, and the capacity of a memory chip is stated in
terms of the number of bytes it can store.
• Thus, we can have chips of size 256 bytes, 1KB, 1MB and so on.
• If a computer has a total memory space of 20MB, it can use RAM chips of the
available capacity to get that much of memory.
• There are two basic operations associated with memory – read and write.
• There is a certain amount of time required for these operations and this is termed
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as ‘access time’.
MEMORY AND ASSOCIATED CONTROL SIGNALS
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MEMORY READ CYCLE-STEPS
I. Place on the address bus, the address of the memory location whose content is
to be read .This action is performed by the processor.
II. Assert the memory read signal which is part of the control bus.
III. Wait until the content of the addressed location appears on the data bus.
IV. Transfer the data on the data bus to the processor.
V. De-activate the memory read signal. The memory read operation is over and
the address on the address bus is not relevant anymore.
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MEMORY WRITE CYCLE-STEPS
I. Place on the address bus, the address of the location to which data is to be
written.
II. On the data bus, place the data to be written.
III. Assert the memory write signal which is part of the control bus.
IV. Wait until the data is stored in the addressed location.
V. De-activate the memory write signal. This ends the memory write operation.
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THE I/O SYSTEM
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COMPUTER LANGUAGES
• MACHINE LANGUAGE
• ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE
• HIGH LEVEL LANGUAGE
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RISC AND CISC
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RISC AND CISC
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NUMBER SYSTEMS
• BINARY
• DECIMAL
• HEXA DECIMAL
• BINARY CODED DECIMAL (BCD)-PACKED AND UNPACKED
• CONVERSIONS BETWEEN THEM IS POSSIBLE
• ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS USING ALL THESE NUMBER SYSTEMS IS POSSIBLE
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UNITS OF MEMORY CAPACITY
• 28 =256 BYTES
• 210=1024 BYTES =1KILOBYTE OR 1KB
• 26 X 210 = 216 =64 KB =65,536 BYTES
• 210 X 210 = 220 = ONE MEGA BYTE (1MB) =1024 X1024 =1,048,576 BYTES
• 210 X220 = 230 = ONE GIGA BYTE (1 GB) = 1024 X1024 X 1024 = 1,073,741,824 BYTES
• 210 X 230 = 240 =ONE TERRA BYTE(TB) =1024 X 1024 X1024 X 1024 =1,099,511,627,776
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UNITS OF MEMORY CAPACITY
• PETA BYTE (PB) =250 BYTES
• EXA BYTE (EB) =260 BYTES
• ZETTA BYTE (ZB) =270 BYTES
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