COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

The course presents the fundamental concepts of computing systems.
The first part of the course introduces the techniques and methodologies for the design of digital systems.
In the second part, the course presents the components of a computer and their organization, some instruction set architectures of the processors, and some techniques for an efficient implementation of the processors and the memory subsystem.
Furthermore, in order to better understand the functioning of the processor, the course introduces the student to the assembly programming of an educational processor. The student also knows microcontrollers and their development environments.

Knowledge and understanding
The student will know:
- the basic techniques for the design of combinational and sequential digital circuits.
- technologies for the design of digital systems at different levels of abstraction.
- the elementary modules of a computer
- the main instruction set architectures.
- the basic architectures of RISC processors
- the assembly of an educational RISC processor

Applying knowledge and understanding
The student will be able to:
-design simple combinational and synchronous sequential circuits
-develop models of simple digital systems using the VHDL description language
- evaluate the performance of a computer and the impact of architectural choices on performance
-write programs in the assembly language of an educational processor

Making judgements

The student will be able to assess the impact of architectural choices on the performance of a computer.

Communication skills

The student will be able to clearly and rigorously present the acquired knowledge and how to apply it for the design and evaluation of simple computing systems.

Learning skills

The student will be able to independently learn:

- additional basic features of processor architectures

- the assembly of other processors

The course will be organized in lectures, exercises, practical experiences and presentation of use cases.

If the teaching is given in a mixed or remote mode, the necessary changes with respect to what was previously stated may be introduced, in order to respect the program planned and reported in the syllabus.

Part I Digital Design

1.1 Combinational circuits design
Switching Algebra. Minimum Boolean expressions. Minimization using Karnaugh maps and Quine-McCluskey method.

1.2 Synchronous sequential circuits Design
Introduction to sequential machines. The memory elements. Synthesis of synchronous sequential circuits. Minimization of finite state machines.

Part II Computer architecture

2.1 Computer abstractions and technology
The types of computers and their characteristics. The components of a computer. Computer Organization. Computer performance evaluation. Amdahl's law.

2.2 The computer language: the Assembly
Instruction Set Architecture of processors. x386 Instruction Set Architecture. Translation and starting a program: assembler, linker, and loader.Configuration of the development environment for Linux. X386 instructions, Subroutine calls, and System Calls. Memory access. Array. Strings. Stack Management.

2.3 Computer Organization
The sequential organization of a processor. Datapath of a sequential processor. Control unit of a sequential processor.
Organization of pipelined processor. Pipeline Hazard. Performance evaluation of a pipelined processor. Techniques for detecting and resolving pipeline hazards. Code scheduling for hazard minimization.

2.4 The Memory subsystem.
Static and dynamic RAM memories. Asynchronous and synchronous memories. Memory organization.
Cache memories. Block placement policies, block identification, block replacement, and write policy. Memory Performance. Techniques for improving cache performance.

2.5. The Input / Output subsystem.
Polling. Interruptions. Vectorized interrupts. Priority management. Direct memory access.

2.6 The microcontrollers
Microprocessors and Microcontrollers (MCU): differences and comparisons. General characteristics of an MCU. Block diagram and on-chip integrated peripherals.
Embedded Core. Memory. General Purpose IO (GPIO). Timers and Counters. Serial communication interfaces and peripherals.
Development environment for microcontrollers - writing simple programs for managing GPIOs and peripherals.

[T1] Fummi, Sami, Silvano, “Progettazione digitale”, 2/ed McGraw-Hill

[T2] Patterson, Hennessy, “Struttura e progetto dei calcolatori”, Zanichelli

[T3] Bucci, “Architettura e organizzazione dei calcolatori elettronici: fondamenti”, McGraw-Hill

[T4] On line Course material