---
title: Microprocessors part 1 b/c why not?
id: 732
html_url: "https://acmcsuf.com/blog/732"
discussion_url: "https://github.com/EthanThatOneKid/acmcsuf.com/discussions/732"
author: "EBYEMJC1 (https://github.com/EBYEMJC1)"
labels: []
created: "2022-11-23T09:54:22.000Z"
edited: "2022-11-23T10:23:57.000Z"
---

Microprocessors part 1 b/c why not?
===================================

How many of you have been totally lost when reading something? Me!! This is why vocabulary is super
important when reading, ask any teacher. When reading something do not just skip over stuff you
don't understand although it may be tempting, look it up. It is a book, you can always go back so
take advantage of that and pause in-between readings and figure out what you don't understand. This
is like the first thing we learned in EDSC 330 and it will be part of this blog post, tell me what
you learned and what you still don't understand if it is even an option to interact with this.

For the intro blog post for the microprocessor series, here is a bunch of vocabulary words that are
kind of randomly ordered and a bit messy, sorry.

Levels of abstraction
Physics - motion of electrons and behavior of the electrons described by quantum mechanics and
maxwell’s equations (I think phys 226 covers some of this if want to learn about it)

Electronic devices - ex. Transistors, capacitors, resistors, that have well defined connection point
s called terminals that can be modeled by the relationship between voltage and current measured at
each terminal
each logic circuit is implemented in accordance with device technology so cmos circuits are
different than nmos circuits which are different from gallium arsenide circuits
Transistors are electronically controlled switches that turn on or off when a voltage or current is
applied to a control terminal

Analog circuits - input and output a continuous range of voltages

Digital circuits - restrict voltages to discrete ranges which are used to indicate a 0 or 1 and are
a subset of analog circuits and must be capable of less than broader class of analog circuits

Logic design- build more complex structures such as adders or memories from digital circuits

From the programmer's perspective
Microarchitecture - links logic design and architecture levels
implementation of isa what is going on under the hood cost and performance tradeoffs is result of
designer’s decisions regarding tradeoffs of cost and performance examples include that x86 has had
many implementations such as 8086, 80286, skylake
Architecture - describes a computer from the programmer's perspective for example intel x86 is
defined by a set of instructions and registers that a programmer is allowed to use
The microarchitecture combines the logic elements to execute the instructions defined by the
architecture
Different types of microarchitectures for example x86 architecture can be implemented by
microarchitectures such as intel core i7 or amd athlon or some other microarchitecture (do this
different microarchitectures have different logic designs or just different links that result in
different performance?)
translate the program into the instruction set of the particular computer that will carry out the
work of the program
ISA or architecture - is the complete specification of the interface between programs that have been
written and the underlying computer hardware that must carry out the work of those programs
interface between computer program and the computer hardware
Opcode-operation or function like lets say multiply
Operand - t individual data values
Data types - what isa specifies the acceptable representation for operands in other words a
representation of an operand such that the computer can perform operations on that representation so
like strings or ints or whatever
Addressing modes - ISA also specifies the mechanism that the computer can use to figure out where
the operands are located so like different ways in which a source operand is denoted in an
instruction link explaining addressing modes in 8086
[https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microprocessor/microprocessor_8086_addressing_modes.htm]
Some isas have as few as a dozen opcodes or operations while others have more and some have a few
data types while other have more some have a few addressing modes while others have more
Isa also specifies the number of unique locations that make up a computer's memory as well as number
of individual 0s and 1s that are contained in each location
Compiler - translating program that translates high level languages to isa of the computer that the
program will execute on
What in the world is an assembler??
An example of an isa is the x86 isa

Operating system - handles low levels of details such as accessing a hard drive or managing memory

Application software - uses facilities provided by operating system to solve a problem for the user

Managing complexity:
Abstraction - hiding details when they are not important there are many levels of abstraction.
Electronic devices are an abstraction of the physics behind electron move or operating systems are
an abstraction of microarchitecture ex2. Using 0s and 1s instead of varying voltages of transistors
in logic gates, another example is a circuit being an abstraction of the gates that make it up. You
can basically think of seeing something as the sum of its parts and kind of ignoring the parts a
great example is a mosaic

Deconstruction - the ability to go from abstraction to the component parts so from bottom to top in
our list of vocab starting at operating system ending at physics or the opposite of abstraction

Discipline - intentionally restricting design choices so can work more productively at a higher
level of abstraction and using interchangeable parts is a familiar application of discipline an
example of this is using digital circuits which intentionally restrict the function of analog
circuits to do a task

Hierarchy - dividing a system into modules then further subdividing each module into smaller parts
until the pieces are easy to understand

Modularity - the modules have well-defined functions and interfaces so they can connect together
easily without unanticipated side effects

Regularity - seeks uniformity among modules so that they can be reused many times reducing the
number of distinct modules that must be designed

Beginning of Computer systems
Software - directs hardware so basically telling hardware what to do

Hardware - physical parts of the computer that performs the actual processing like adding or
subtracting also called CPU, processor, or microprocessor

Computer - hardware + software

levels of transformation
Natural languages - languages people speak like English
The problem with natural languages is that there is a lot of ambiguity like if I said time flies you
should be able to know that it means that time is passing by quickly but someone might view it as
time literally flying or maybe think of a group of flies called time flies just like a group of
whales like humpback whales. Point is context matters and there are expressions that may be hard to
understand especially since they are not universal this multiple interpretations of the same
instruction makes it hard for computers to understand natural language

Algorithms - is a step by step procedure that is guaranteed to terminate such that each step is
precisely stated and can be carried out by the computer
Defitness - each step is precisely stated
Effective computability - each step can be carried out by the computer
Finiteness - the procedure terminates
For every problem there are usually many different algorithms for solving that problem but differ in
amount of time or resources or steps or whatever
Program - transform the algorithm to a computer program through use of programming languages which
are mechanical languages
Mechanical languages - invented for use in specifying a sequence of instructions to a computer so do
not have ambiguity
Languages are machine independent meaning they should work no matter the machine this is for high
level languages while low level languages may be machine dependent as there is different types of
assembly language for different computers

Instruction set look above -

Microarchitecture - look above

Logic circuit - look above

The device - look above

Total gibberish, right?
Look up turing
Look up nmos, mos, and cmos, we will maybe go over these when we go over logic gates which should be
after binary numbers God willing, no promises though
Next blog will be on binary numbers and number systems