Introduction

Motivation
A computer is the combination of two distinct parts: Computer hardware is the collection of physical elements that comprise a computer system Computer software refers to the programs installed on that hardware This course is about the hardware of the computers. What the hardware components within a computer are, how those components are built, how they communicate, and eventually how the computer hardware works. Knowing how the hardware works will help you understand how the software works as well. Knowing at least something on even if not much details about the hardware of the toy you are using will probably make you a better professional.

Signal vs. Data

Data: formatted information examples: voice, music, image, file Signal: electric, electromagnetic, or light representation of data To be transmitted, data must be turned into energy in the form of electro-magnetic signals or light etc.

Analog vs. Digital Data

Analog data take on continuous values in some interval voice, temperature, etc. Digital data take on discrete (a finite / countable number of) values in a given interval text, digitized images, etc.

Analog vs. Digital Data

Transmission Impairments

Sent and received signals are not same not perfect pairs Main types of transmission impairments: Attenuation Delay Distortion Noise

Transmission Impairments
For analog signals, impairments can degrade signal quality

For digital signals, impairments can cause bit errors

Attenuation
Attenuation is reduction / loss in signal power When a signal travels through a medium, it loses some of its energy Main challenges in combating attenuation: (1) received signal must have: sufficient strength so that receiver can detect signal not too strong to overload transmitter / receiver circuitry (2) signal must maintain a level sufficiently higher than noise, to be received without error

Attenuation

To compensate for loss, analog amplifiers / digital repeaters are used to boost the signal at regular intervals

Delay Distortion

Delay Distortion: change in signals form / shape Each signal component has its own propagation speed through a medium, and therefore, its own delay in arriving at the final destination Critical for composite (both analog and digital) signals

Noise
Noise: unwanted signals that get inserted / generated somewhere between transmitter and receiver Noise is the major limiting factor in communications system performance Presence of noise limits the reliability with which the receiver can correctly determine the information that was transmitted

Problems with Analog Transmission

When analog signal is transmitted over long distance, it becomes distorted due to annetuation, delay distortion, noise, and possible interference Transmitters are used to increase the amplitude However, the noise will not be eliminated in the received signal

Digital Transmission
Suppose that a string of 0s and 1s is conveyed by a sequence of positive and negative voltages A digital regenerator is used to recover the data from the digital dignal

How to transfer data?

Digital devices, such as computers use bits to represent data Transmitting data means sending bits Physically, communication system can use one of the following energy types to transfer information: 1. electric current 2. electromagnetic wave 3. light How to encode bits? Each bit is represented by a voltage, for example: 0 positive voltage 1 negative voltage

Why Digital Transmission (Signal)?

Most important reason: Since only two values exist, less error occurs; hence can travel long distance Digital regenerator eliminates the accumulation of noise after subsequent usage of repeaters Supporting reasons: Cheaper to send data, since easier to work with only two values Maintanence is cheaper

Analog vs. Digital Signal

Analog signal: signal that is continuous in time and can assume an infinite number of values in a given range continuous in time and value Discrete (digital) signal signal that is continuous in time and can assume only a limited number of values maintains a constant level and then changes to another constant level

Sampling
Sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. In sampling data, available number of values (which is actually infinite) in analog domain is mapped to a limited number of values in digital domain. It is converting unlimited / vast amount of values to limited set of numbers. The relation between floating point and integer numbers is analogous to this. If you want to sample a set of floating point values, say the values between 0.0 and 9.0, you may create the sample values as {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9} if the sampling interval is 1. If you use 2 as the sampling interval, the set of values becomes {0, 2, 4, 6, 8}.

Sampling

Computers are digital

Computers are electronic circuits, so all they really process is electricity. To make it more precise, computers process the voltage of the processed electricity. Since it is so hard to work with analog systems, the applied voltage to the computer is digitized by rounding the voltage values. Two voltages are applied to the computer: 0 and 5. When the applied voltage is close to zero, it is assumed to be zero and vice versa. When part of a computer circuit carries a voltage of 5 volts, we say that it has a value of 1. When part of a circuit carries zero voltage, we say that it has a value of 0. Its all a matter of interpretation.

Why is digital preferred?

1. It is easier and much more practical to work on Digital signals. a. Once a signal is turned into a sequence of discrete numbers, mathematical algorithms can be used to operate on the digital data, whilst not on analog data. b. Digital numbers can also be stored more compactly than analog values. 2. If an analog signal is transmitted over long distances, noise (erroneous change in the signal) attaches itself to the signal, and is not practical if it is possible- to remove the noise from an analog signal.

Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)

When some analog data is to be processed by the computers, it is required to convert the analog data to digital. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC or A/D) is a device that uses sampling to convert a continuous quantity to a discrete time representation in digital form. The reverse operation is performed by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

Period vs. Frequency

Period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event. A lecture takes is 50 minutes; T = 50 m. Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. Heart beats 180 times a minute; f = 180 times / min. T . f = 1. Hertz symbolizes count per second. f = 180 times / min = 180/60 Hz. = 3 Hz.

What is a computer?
A computer is a general-purpose device that can be programmed to carry out a set of arithmetic and logical operations. Any problem can be mapped into a set of logical and arithmetical operations; hence a computer can practically solve all problems.

Abstraction Levels of computers.

Abstract view of a computer

Computer Classification by size

Microcomputer / personal computer Desktop Dedicated computers Car navigation systems Embedded computers Mobile devices Laptops, notebooks, palmtops Tablets Smartphones, PDAs Game consoles Mini computer Mainframe computer Super computer

Computer Classification by function

Supercomputers Servers A computer that is dedicated to provide a service Workstations Serve single user with additional hardware Embedded computers Specific control functions within larger system Operate continuously without being reset or rebooted Once employed the software is not modified Smart phones / PDAs PDA functions as a personal information manager A Smartphone is a mobile phone with additional computing capability and connectivity

Theoretical History of Computers

Early computing machines had fixed programs. Reprogramming was a laborious process ENIAC required 3 weeks to load a program A stored-program computer keeps programs and data in read-write, random-access memory (RAM) Alan Turing described a hypothetical machine is known as Turing Machine in 1936 Von Neumann architecture proposed by Von Neumann

Von Neumann architecture

Modified Von Neumann architecture

Von Neumann bottleneck

Neumann bottleneck is the limited throughput (data transfer rate) between CPU and memory Since program memory and data memory cannot be accessed at the same time, throughput is much smaller than the rate at which the CPU can work This limits the effective processing speed of CPU CPU is continuously forced to wait for needed data to be transferred to or from memory Since CPU speed and memory size have increased much faster than the throughput between them, the bottleneck has become more of a problem, a problem whose severity increases with every newer generation of CPU.

Harvard architecture
Harvard architecture features separate places for: instruction memory data memory. With this type of a design, both data and instructions could be operated on independently. Another subtle difference is that Von Neumann architecture permits self-modifying programs, whereas Harvard architecture does not. Since the same memory space in the von Neumann architecture may hold data and program code, it is possible for an instruction to change the instruction in another portion of the code space. In the Harvard Architecture, loads and stores can only occur in the data memory, so self-modifying code is harder

Harvard Architecture

Harvard Architecture

Technical History of Computers

1. First Generation: Vacuum Tube Computers (19451953) 2. Second Generation: Transistorized Computers (19541965) 3. Third Generation: Integrated Circuit Computers (19651980) 4. Fourth Generation: VLSI Computers (1980 )

Technical History of Computers

1. 2. 3. 4. Vacuum Tube Transistor Chip Integrated circuit

1. Vacuum Tube (19451953)

During World War II, the army had an insatiable need for calculating the trajectories of its new ballistic armaments Thousands of human computers were engaged around the clock cranking through the arithmetic required for these firing tables Realizing that an electronic device could shorten ballistic table calculation from days to minutes, the army funded the ENIAC

ENIAC
ENIAC shorten the time to calculate a table from 20 hours to 30 seconds ENIAC had shown that vacuum tube computers were fast and feasible During the next decade, vacuum tube systems continued to improve and were commercially successful ENIAC is recognized as the first all-electronic, generalpurpose digital computer. ENIAC used 17,468 vacuum tubes, occupied 180 meter square of floor space, weighed 30 tons, and consumed 174 kilowatts of power ENIAC had a memory capacity of about 1,000 information bits (about 20 10-digit decimal numbers) and used punched cards to store data.

ENIAC

Vacuum Tubes

Vacuum Tubes
A vacuum tube is a device controlling electric current through a vacuum in a sealed container The container is often thin transparent glass in a roughly cylindrical shape Vacuum tubes are used for rectification, amplification, switching, or similar processing or creation of electrical signals.

2. Transistor (19541965)
The vacuum tube technology of the first generation was not very dependable Vacuum tube systems often experienced more downtime than uptime In 1948, three researchers with Bell Laboratories invented the transistor This new technology not only revolutionized devices such as televisions and radios, but also pushed the computer industry into a new generation Because transistors consume less power than vacuum tubes, are smaller, and work more reliably, the circuitry in computers consequently became smaller and more reliable

3. Integrated Circuits (19651980)

The real explosion came with IC (microchip) generation Early ICs allowed dozens of transistors to exist on a single silicon chip that was even smaller than a single transistor Computers became faster, smaller, and cheaper, bringing huge gains in processing power. IC is an electronic circuit manufactured into the surface of a semiconductor material Discrete circuit is an electronic circuit built out of discrete components, such as resistors, transistors, etc., instead of a single integrated circuit. The integration of large numbers of tiny transistors into a small chip was an enormous improvement over the manual assembly of circuits using discrete electronic components

Advantages of IC
1. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit rather than being constructed one transistor at a time much less material is used to construct a packaged IC die than to construct a discrete circuit. 2. Performance is high because the components switch quickly and consume little power as a result of the small size and close proximity of the components

4. VLSI Computers (1980 - )

VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) enabled several billion transistors on an IC Multiple developments were required to achieve this increased density Smaller design rules Cleaner fabrication facilities

Hardware Components of Computers

Questions?