Computer Architecture

The content of this course material contains into two main parts: (i) The first part focuses primarily on the main components of a computer and their interactions: Processor, Memory, and Peripheral Organs and a detailed view of the memories (central memory, cache memory and auxiliary memories). Secondly, this first part provides the notions of computer instructions. (ii) The second part consists of presentation of the architecture and internal components of the microprocessor, their roles and their interconnections. Then, this part contains explanations of the components of microprocessor MIPS R3000 and its assembly language. Thus, we illustrate the concepts and internal architecture on the MIPS R3000 industrial processor. These two parts are organized into 4 chapters:

- Chapter 1: Introduction and basic components of a computer. It offers an overview of the history of computers and their generations, as well as the famous Von Neumann machine. This chapter will therefore present the different internal components of a computer and the relationships between them. Then, it presents the different addressing modes (immediate, direct, indirect, relative, indexed, etc.). Moreover, it explains the internal organization, physical structure, components, and operations of central memory. It presents the different types of memory, the memory hierarchy and the role and organization of cache memory. Finally, it explains the design of central memory using memory chips (ICs).

- Chapter 2: Notions of computer instructions. This chapter presents the different levels of programming languages (high level and low level: assembly language and machine language). In addition, it explains the different addressing modes and the different types of machines (3, 2 and 1 addresses).

- Chapter 3: The microprocessor. This chapter begins with the definition of the microprocessor and its history. Then, it presents, in detail, the internal components of a microprocessor and their roles and interconnections. Afterwards, we present the performance and improvements of the architectures of a microprocessor, namely MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second), Harvard architecture, frequency increase, CISC and RISC and Pipeline architecture.

- Chapter 4: The MIPS R3000 microprocessor. This chapter presents the architecture of the 32-bit MIPS R3000 microprocessor, the visible registers, addressing and structuring of the addressable space, and the assembly language of the MIPS R3000 processor. It defines the hardware/software interface, introduces the concepts of machine language and assembly language, and introduces students to programming in MIPS R3000 assembly language. Also, it explains the steps in transforming a program written in a procedural language such as C into executable code in machine language through several examples, exercises, and programs using the MARS emulator.