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CS 146 The Big Picture in Computer Science PROF. DANIEL ERNST F E B R U A R Y 2 8 TH, 2 0 1 1 COMPUTER HARDWARE What would you say is the greatest invention of the 20th century? (ABC News poll, 1999) Top responses Computers Automobile ??? Electricity Television Telephone/Telecommunications Airplane Medicines/Vaccinations % 30 12 9 9 7 4 4 “The transistor; without it, the XBOX would probably be the size of a city.” - nate66, some xbox forum 2 Introduction of Microelectronics Miniaturization of immense proportions Transistor: This is an abbreviated combination of the words "transconductance" or "transfer", and "varistor". The device logically belongs in the varistor family, and has the transconductance or transfer impedance of a device having gain, so that this combination is descriptive. — Bell Telephone Laboratories — Technical Memorandum (May 28, 1948) Integrated Circuit: Miniaturized electronic circuit manufactured in a thin layer of semiconductor material. 3 Moore’s Law 4 Moore’s Law 5 The Power of Miniaturization EDSAC 1 (1949) ~ 500 OPs Pentium 4 (2002) ~ 12 GFLOPs 24,000,000 times faster 6 A picture is worth 1000 words… (or a billion transistors) 7 Managing Complexity with Abstraction Designers deal with the extreme complexity of microprocessors by using abstraction. Focus only on 1-2 levels of abstraction at a time Similar to OOD Don’t need to know how the module works, just that it does work. And the interface 8 Levels of Abstraction in a Computer System hardware software Apps Applications – Generic Software O/S Operating System – Controlling Software Arch Architecture – HW/SW Interface mArch marchitecture – High-level organization Logic Digital Logic – Building-block Modules Digital Digital Circuits – Continuous Discrete Analog Analog Circuits – Fun with Electricity Devices Devices – Transistors, Capacitors, etc. Physics Physical Properties – Electrons, Ions, etc. 9