Questions tagged [computer-architecture]
Questions about the organization and design of computer hardware.
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What are GPUs bad at?
I understand that GPUs are generally used to do LOTS of calculations in parallel. I understand why we would want to parallelize processes in order to speed things up. However, GPUs aren't always ...
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How do computers keep track of time?
How are computers able to tell the correct time and date every time?
Whenever I close the computer (shut it down) all connections and processes inside stop. How is it that when I open the computer ...
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Why is addition as fast as bit-wise operations in modern processors?
I know that bit-wise operations are so fast on modern processors, because they can operate on 32 or 64 bits on parallel, so bit-wise operations take only one clock cycle. However addition is a complex ...
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What happens to the cache contents on a context switch?
In a multicore processor, what happens to the contents of a core's cache (say L1) when a context switch occurs on that cache?
Is the behaviour dependent on the architecture or is it a general ...
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Why does a processor have 32 registers?
I've always wondered why processors stopped at 32 registers. It's by far the fastest piece of the machine, why not just make bigger processors with more registers? Wouldn't that mean less going to the ...
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Does a byte contain 8 bits, or 9?
I read in this assembly programming tutorial that 8 bits are used for data while 1 bit is for parity, which is then used for detecting parity error (caused by hardware fault or electrical disturbance)....
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Why would anyone want CISC?
In our computer systems lecture we were introduced to the MIPS processor. It was (re)developed over the course of the term and has in fact been quite easy to understand. It uses a RISC design, that is ...
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If the speed of electrical charge hasn't changed, how have computers become faster?
Everyone knows computing speed has drastically increased since their invention, and it looks set to continue. But one thing is puzzling me: if you ran an electrical current through a material today, ...
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How does a computer work?
I have been a computer nerd for many many years. I can program in quite a few languages, and I can even build them. I sat down with a buddy the other day and asked how a computer actually takes ...
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How does the computer determine whether a number is smaller or greater than another?
It might sound like a stupid question but I'm really curious to know how a computer knows that $1<2$? Also, how does a computer know that the order of integer is $1,2,3,4,5,\ldots$ and alphabet is ...
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Are generational garbage collectors inherently cache-friendly?
A typical generational garbage collector keeps recently allocated data in a separate memory region. In typical programs, a lot of data is short-lived, so collecting young garbage (a minor GC cycle) ...
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What are system clock and CPU clock; and what are their functions?
While reading a book, I came across a paragraph given below:
In order to synchronize all of a computer’s operations, a system clock—a small quartz
crystal located on the motherboard—is used. The ...
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Why Do Computers Use the Binary Number System (0,1)?
Why Do Computers Use the Binary Number System (0,1)? Why don't they use Ternary Number System (0,1,2) or any other number system instead?
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Why is the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) referred to as an 8-bit system, rather than a 1-byte system?
As far as I've understood it, referring to this system as an 8-bit system points out that one can access 8 bits of data in one instruction.
While I understand that we're not saving vast amounts of ...
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Why are reversible gates not used?
I was reading the book "The singularity is near" written by Kurzweil and he mentioned the reversible gates like for example the Fredkin gate. The advantage using such gates is that we could get rid of ...
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What does the processor do while waiting for a main memory fetch
Assuming l1 and l2 cache requests result in a miss, does the processor stall until main memory has been accessed?
I heard about the idea of switching to another thread, if so what is used to wake up ...
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Is a stack overflow detected by hardware or software?
Is it the task of the software (operating system) to detect stack overflows or is a stack overflow detected in hardware, causing an exception in the CPU?
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Is a universal assembly language for all computers possible?
I would like to ask a few questions about Assembly language. My understanding is that it's very close to machine language, making it faster and more efficient.
Since we have different computer ...
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How to calculate the number of tag, index and offset bits of different caches?
Specifically:
1) A direct-mapped cache with 4096 blocks/lines in which each block has 8 32-bit words. How many bits are needed for the tag and index fields, assuming a 32-bit address?
2) Same ...
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Why floating point representation uses a sign bit instead of 2's complement to indicate negative numbers
Consider a fixed point representation which can be regarded as a degenerate case of a floating number. It is entirely possible to use 2's complement for negative numbers. But why is a sign bit ...
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Would it be wrong to say that the processor (and hardware) is the implementation of an interpreter for machine language?
The question is basically in the title. I know that a computers hardware is of course some physical object, where as the interpreter is some abstract thing that does something abstract with the code ...
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CPU frequency per year
I know that since ~2004, Moore's law stopped working for CPU clock speed.
I'm looking for a graph showing this, but am unable to find it: most charts out there show the transistor count or the ...
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What does machine code actually look like while being run?
When machine code is actually being executed by hardware and the CPU, what does it look like?
Would it look like binary, as in instructions being represented by ones and zeros, or would it be ...
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Are today's massive parallel processing units able to run cellular automata efficiently?
I wonder whether the massively parallel computation units provided in graphic cards nowadays (one that is programmable in OpenCL, for example) are good enough to simulate 1D cellular automata (or ...
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Memory Consistency vs Cache Coherence
Is it true that Sequential Consistency is a stronger property than Cache Coherence?
According to
Sorin, Daniel J; Hill, Mark D; Wood, David A: A Primer on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence, ...
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How would a CPU designed purely for functional programming be different?
CPU's are to an extent designed with in mind the software that people will write for it, implicitly or explicitly.
It seems to me that if you look at the design of instruction set architectures, ...
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How can I academically say that 'one computer is slower than the other'?
I'm writing a research paper and I have to basically say that one microcontroller is slower than an other microprocessor. However, I'm worried that simply saying that it's 'slower' wouldn't be ...
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What is a GPU year?
I am reading papers in machine learning and they say things like, "This computation took $x$ number of GPU years".
What is a GPU year? How long is that?
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What is "memory coalescing"?
I came to know that the graphic processing unit have something called memory coalescing. On reading on it I was not clear on the topic. Is this any way related to Memory Level Parallelism.
I have ...
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purpose of supercomputers
Last fall I went on a tour of the Blue Waters supercomputer at the University of Illinois. I asked whether anyone ever used the entire computer. I was told that it was always working on multiple ...
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Why do logic gates behave the way they do?
I am a Software Developer but I came from a non-CS background so maybe it is a wrong question to ask, but I do not get why logic gates/boolean logic behave the way they do.
Why for example:
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Will the future quantum computers use the binary, ternary or quaternary numeral system?
Our current computers use bits, so they use the binary numeral system. But I heard that the future quantum computers will use qubits instead of simple bits.
Since in the word "qubit" there is the ...
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How is a program executed at the CPU level?
I know this is a very common question. But I have a different angle in my mind. I will just try to articulate it here.
From what I know, every instruction that a CPU executes, is in machine language ...
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why do CPU architectures use a flags register (advantages?)
Some CPUs have a flags register (ARM,x86,...), others don't (MIPS,...). What's the advantage of having a CMP instruction to update the flags register followed by a branch instruction instead of using ...
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Why use SIMD if we have GPGPU?
I thought this question is better served in the CS part of Stack Exchange. Now that we have GPGPUs with languages like CUDA and OpenCL, do the multimedia SIMD extensions (SSE/AVX/NEON) still serve a ...
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How does a TLB and data cache work?
I'm trying to study for an exam and I realized I'm confused about how the TLB and data cache work.
I understand that the TLB is essentially a cache of most recently used physical addresses. However, ...
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Logic gates from everyday materials
Logic gates are an abstract device which can be implemented with electromagnetic relays, vacuum tubes, or transistors. These implemenations have been successful in computing in part because of ...
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Why did MIPS include shamt and distinguish funct/opcode?
I'm confused as to why the MIPS designers would include 5 bits dedicated to shifting and have separate opcode and function bits.
Because MIPS is so RISC I assume that only shifting would be done in a ...
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Do computers actually use carry-lookahead adders?
There are plenty of details about carry lookahead adders such as Kogge-Stone, Lander-Fischer, etc. in college CS courses. They are described as "common in the industry". However, I can't find any ...
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Organisation and Architecture of Quantum Computers
What are devices and their interconnections used alongwith Quantum Processors? Are they compatible with hardware devices like Cache, RAM, Disks of current computers?
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Is there an abstract machine that can capture power consumption?
When reporting algorithmic complexity of an algorithm, one assumes the underlying computations are performed on some abstract machine (e.g. RAM) that approximates a modern CPU. Such models allow us to ...
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Research on evaluating the performance of cache-obliviousness in practice
Cache-oblivious algorithms and data structures are a rather new thing, introduced by Frigo et al. in Cache-oblivious algorithms, 1999. Prokop's thesis from the same year introduces the early ideas as ...
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Are CPU architectures biased towards procedural runtimes?
Are there any changes that could be made to CPUs to make them perform better for concurrent runtimes like Rust? For instance, are there changes to branch prediction implementations or cache sizes ...
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How does the processor find kernel code after an interrupt?
When an interrupt occurs, the processor preempts the current process and calls kernel code to handle the interrupt. How does the processor know where to enter the kernel?
I understand that there are ...
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How is conditional jump implemented in the CPU?
After reading the question I'm still not sure how CPU does branching.
I understand that we have an instruction counter which points to the current instruction. And after performing conditional jump it ...
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Why is a 4 KB alignment requirement imposed on Intel Core i7 page tables for Linux
I'm reading CSAPP and couldn't wrap my head around this part:
Summary of what the section says:
Intel Core i7 support a 48-bit virtual address space and 52-bit physical address space.
Core i7 uses a ...
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Why is the OS design able to reduce power consumption?
I have read that OSes like Android and iOS are somehow optimised to improve battery life.
My understanding is that a CPU executes a certain number of operations in a certain time, so I would think ...
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CPU Cache is managed by which software component?
CPU caches are used by exploiting temporal and spatial locality. My question is who is responsible for managing these caches? Is this Operating system that identifies a particular access pattern and ...
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Why do we need so many transistors in a chip, and how are they managed?
My knowledge is very vague as all we have are visual diagrams etc, but we have memory address and registers, the ALU being the heart(apparently). Single core CPUs process one instruction at a time ...
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Data General MV/8000 virtues of "No mode bit"
I'm reading Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" where a team at Data General design a new machine (codenamed "Eagle", later named MV/8000). It is 32-bit extension of a previous architecture (...
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