Computer architecture

Computer architecture: the definition

The coordination of abstract levels of a processor under changing forces, involving design, measurement and evaluation. It also includes the overall fundamental working principle of the internal logical structure of a computer system.

It can also be defined as the design of the task-performing part of computers, i.e. how various gates and transistors are interconnected and are caused to function per the instructions given by an assembly language programmer.

Instruction set architecture

1. The ISA is the interface between the software and hardware.
2. It is the set of instructions that bridges the gap between high level languages and the hardware.
3. For a processor to understand a command, it should be in binary and not in High Level Language. The ISA encodes these values.
4. The ISA also defines the items in the computer that are available to a programmer. For example, it defines data types, registers, addressing modes, memory organization etc.
5. Register are high Addressing modes are the ways in which the instructions locate their operands.

Memory organization defines how instructions interact with the memory.

Computer organization

Computer organization helps optimize performance-based products. For example, software engineers need to know the processing ability of processors. They may need to optimize software in order to gain the most performance at the least expense. This can require quite detailed analysis of the computer organization. For example, in a multimedia decoder, the designers might need to arrange for most data to be processed in the fastest data path and the various components are assumed to be in place and task is to investigate the organisational structure to verify the computer parts operates.

Computer organization also helps plan the selection of a processor for a particular project. Multimedia projects may need very rapid data access, while supervisory software may need fast interrupts.

Sometimes certain tasks need additional components as well. For example, a computer capable of virtualization needs virtual memoryhardware so that the memory of different simulated computers can be kept separated.

The computer organization and features also affect the power consumption and the cost of the processor.