2. Narrated Hasan: Knowledge is of two types. Firstly, knowledge
perceived by the heart, and that is useful knowledge; secondly, the
knowledge at on the tip of one’s tongue, and that is an argument from
Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, against the children of Adam.
Transmitted by Darimi.
Al-Tirmidhi – Hadith 270
3. Connecting
• All the units must be connected
• Different type of connection for different type of unit
• Memory
• Input/Output
• CPU
4. Memory Connection
• Receives and sends data
• Receives addresses (of locations)
• Receives control signals
• Read
• Write
5. Input/Output Connection(1)
• Similar to memory from Proccesser’s viewpoint
• Output
• Receive data from computer
• Send data to peripheral
• Input
• Receive data from peripheral
• Send data to computer
6. Input/Output Connection(2)
• Receive control signals from computer
• Send control signals to peripherals
• e.g. spin disk
• Receive addresses from computer
• e.g. port number to identify peripheral
• Send interrupt signals
7. CPU Connection
• Reads instruction and data
• Writes out data (after processing)
• Sends control signals to other units
• Receives (& acts on) interrupts
9. Buses
• There are a number of possible interconnection systems
• e.g. Unibus (DEC-PDP)
• e.g. Control/Address/Data bus
10. What is a Bus?
• A shared communication pathway connecting two or more devices
• Usually broadcast
• Often grouped
• A number of channels in one bus
• e.g. 32 bit data bus is 32 separate single bit channels
• Power lines may not be shown
12. Data Bus
• Carries data
• Remember that there is no difference between “data” and “instruction” at
this level
• Width is a key determinant of performance
• 8, 16, 32, 64 bit
13. Address bus
• Identify the source or destination of data
• e.g. CPU needs to read an instruction (data) from a given location in
memory
• Bus width determines maximum memory capacity of system
• e.g. 8080 has 16 bit address bus giving 64k address space
14. Control Bus
• Control and timing information
• Memory read/write signal
• I/O read/write signal
• Bus request/grant
• Interrupt request
• Clock signals
17. Single Bus Problems
• Lots of devices on one bus leads to:
• Propagation delays
• Long data paths mean that co-ordination of bus use can adversely affect performance
• If aggregate data transfer approaches bus capacity
• Most systems use multiple buses to overcome these problems
19. Bus Types
• Dedicated
• Separate data & address lines
• Multiplexed
• Shared lines
• Address valid or data valid control line
• Advantage - fewer lines
• Disadvantages
• More complex control
• Reduction performance
20. Bus Arbitration
• More than one module controlling the bus
• e.g. CPU and DMA controller
• Only one module may control bus at one time
• Arbitration may be centralised or distributed
21. Centralised or Distributed Arbitration
• Centralised
• Single hardware device controlling bus access
• Bus Controller
• Arbiter
• May be part of CPU or separate
• Distributed
• Each module may claim the bus
• Control logic on all modules
22. Error Correction
• Hard Failure
• Permanent defect
• Soft Error
• Random, non-destructive
• No permanent damage to memory
• Detected using Hamming error correcting code
25. Example (single bit error) at M=8
• Determine code length
• Bit by bit comparison is done using XOR and the
result is called syndrome, indicating the error bit
• Length of syndrome bits = length of K bits and range
between 0-2^K -1
• Calculate check bits using
• The code just described is known as a single-error-
correcting (SEC)