CHAPTER 0 COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE AND ORGANIZATION

1. CHAPTER 0
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE AND ORGANIZATION INTRODUCTION
I welcome you all to the course on computer architecture and organization, So, this
course basically will give you an idea of the course computer architecture and
organization. So, in this course, we will be talking about the evolution of
computers, how computers have evolved over the years, and where we stand today.
How the improvements have taken place over the years, we will see into that. How
a computer actually works inside when we say that computer is performing so,
many tasks, how exactly it is performing that task, we will be looking into all those
details in this particular course.
I will also look into the various design alternatives, we will be evaluating various
design alternatives and specifically, we will be taking the case study of
contemporary RISC architecture that is MIPS. So, which will be really helpful for
many of the engineering science students specifically the students from computer
science and engineering, electrical engineering, electronics engineering and as well
as from some of the industry professionals.
So, in this course, we shall be covering almost all the aspects of computer
architecture and organization that is covered in a standard curriculum, the courses
which are available in the various universities and institutions. For instance, we
shall be starting with the instruction set architectures of computer systems, we shall
be looking at the data path and the control unit designs, we shall be looking at the
design of memory systems design of arithmetic and logic circuits both for integer
unit and the floating point units, then we shall be moving towards the input output
or the IO systems and there are so many standard buses so, many stand new
standards are coming up, we shall also be talking talking and discussing on them.
And towards the end of the course, we shall be looking at some of the advanced
topics like we shall be looking at pipelining parallel processing, which at one point
in time were considered to be very advanced topics, but today they have become
quite part and parcel of the very standard processes we use in our daily lives. Now,
in this course, one thing is definitely true that learning computer architecture and
organization is important not only to the hardware engineers who are into design,

2. but in today's scenario, even a software programmer, a person who is writing
computer programs a person who's writing compilers, for example, they can be a
better programmer, if they know how computers work internally, . So, learning the
subject is very important not only for the students, and as mentioned, also for the
practicing engineers, who possibly are into the software industry, they are into
programming. So, this course will also be useful for them. So, overall, for what we
shall be trying consciously is to start from the very basics without assuming too
much background on part of the audience or the participants. But we shall be trying
to take them into a journey, where we shall be moving towards the more advanced
topics and advanced aspects on computing. And wherever possible, we shall be
trying to give illustrative examples, trying to talk about case studies so that they
can actually relate or they can actually validate whatever they are learning, and
they can also visualize the impact of whatever they're learning. And one thing I
would like to also emphasize the way we shall be handling this course, We'll be
following some kind of quantitative design philosophy, that we shall be trying to
justify something, why we're doing this, what is the purpose and what is the
justification of doing this? That is a very modern way of looking into design for
looking for implementing a system so as to meet some design goals or performance
guidelines. So, I can finish by saying a couple of words again,
As already discussed about what are the various aspects of this course, what we
will be including here, I hope, this course will be useful for all those students who
are into this engineering science and starting from really very basic, we will be
going into the advanced things slowly, which will really make you understand
where we stand today where our computer architecture has gone into. So, I guess
this course will be really useful
And the main textbooks that would be following other than the standard textbooks
which most of the college curriculums follow, like the books by Hampshire,
Kanzaki. The books by Stallings, John Hayes, we shall be also dwelling into the
more advanced test books like the ones by Hennessy and Patterson.