Answer To: Kent Institute Australia Pty. Ltd. Assessment Brief XXXXXXXXXXABN XXXXXXXXXXCRICOS Code: 00161E RTO...
Deepti answered on Jun 18 2021
Reflective Journal
Introduction
I have developed the journal by consolidating notes from the slides of the course. The main aim of this reflective journal is to record my understanding of various concepts of computer architecture. It includes a thorough understanding of every week during the course along with certain concepts that I need to study further for clearer understanding. All the information is connected and chronologically ordered according to the course covered throughout the semester. I have classified the weekly work into topics. On completion of this course, I have a strong grasp on computer as a layered system and I can explain the basic architecture and functions of computer components.
Background
The course has leveraged each and every concept of computer science relevant to understand computer architecture. It began with basics of automated computing, hardware components and basic system software. Data representation and numbering system is explained in detail. Further topics that are covered include processors, data storage and secondary storage, system integration and performance, input/output, networks, operating systems, virtualization, cloud computing and system administration.
Content Analysis
The introductory chapter explains automated computing, biological computing, mechanical computing, electronic computing and optical computing. Optical computing was interesting as I have an inclination towards this filed. Computation in this computing uses photons produced by diodes for digital computation. The computation speed shall depend upon on the speed of information transfer and its processing speed. I researched about this computing and find an interesting learning that photons basically use wave propagation and interference pattern to provide output. Optical transistor is used in optical computing by making use of materials with non-linear refractive index.
Data Representation
This part discussed the numbering systems, their use in representing data, different method of representing data, representation of nonnumeric data and data structures with their uses. The information helped in understanding how the data is represented in the computer for processing and storage. The state of electrical switches determines the binary digit as zero (off/true) and one (on/false) and all data is represented as binary digits. Boolean logic is used to process simple and complex conditions by combining true/false values. Values are represented through base and radix of numbering system. Different notations used for numbering are binary, hexadecimal and octal. The data types used by CPU include Integer, real, character and Boolean. Data involves compact, accurate and standardized representation.
· Integer- They hold Signed (Positive and negative) values and unsigned (only positive) values with notation formats as excess notation and two’s complement.
· Real- These numbers include whole and decimal numbers using floating point notation which uses fixed position of radix. It has mantissa and exponent. This notation is complex and is prone to truncation errors and underflow errors.
· Character- These are represented with integers through ASCII coding table that maps the characters with integers. It uses 7-bit format which is capable of representing punctuation mark and device control characters along with letters. However, it has a limited range of 95 representable characters through 128 entries. Another advanced character coding table used in computation is Unicode.
· Boolean- ‘True’ and ‘False’ values are required for evaluating and storing comparison and condition instructions.
· Memory Address- It is a sequence of 8-bit memory locations. Addressable memory stores unsigned integer. Segmented memory format was used in old CPUs.
Processor Technology
This part focusses on CPU instructions, processing operations, instruction format, word size, registers. CPU uses instruction cycle and execution cycle to accomplish computation. The CU component reads instruction, increments pointer and stores the instruction in register. Data is stored in registers and memory addresses are copied from memory and loaded into registers. Processing circuitry enables data movement between registers in the execution cycle. Each instruction has an Op code and operands. Instructions are moved via load and store operations and manipulations are done through bitwise operation using NOT, AND, OR and XOR. Other instructions include ADD for addition of bits, SHIFT for shifting bits from left to right, BRANCH for conditional and unconditional branching, HALT for terminating. Complex instructions are executed by combination of simple instructions via RISC and CISC. The execution cycles are fractions of clock rate and measured in GHz. CPU performance related to instructions is measured in MIPS or MFLOPS. Performance of computer or its components is measured as Benchmark. Several Benchmarks are offered by SPEC, TPC and PassMark. ALU uses General purpose registers and CU uses special purpose registers. The basic data transformation is done in words which have fixed number of bytes. CPUs have word size of 64 bits. Word size is crucial in maintaining cost/performance ratio. Therefore, it is important to match the CPU word size with data size. Performance can be enhanced using different techniques such as
· Memory caching.
· Pipelining technique
· Branch Prediction and Speculation execution
· Multiprocessing.
Physical implementation of CPU uses switches and circuits on a microprocessor. Processor fabrication can be done using Moore’s Law or Rock’s Law.
Data Storage Technology
This part provides detailed understanding of primary and secondary storage, their characteristics and different secondary storage devices and their performance. Components for storage include RAM that stores the data as well as performs read/write mechanism and device controller is the interface between system bus and RAM. They have characteristics combinations for primary and secondary storage like
· Speed, a complex characteristic with different metrics like access time and data transfer rate.
· Volatility, a degree to which the storage device can hold data.
· Access Methods like serial, random and parallel access.
· Portability of device and the storage medium
· Cost & Capacity
Primary...