Lesson 5

Read the text: What does Computer Architecture mean?

Computer architecture is the theory behind the design of a computer. In the same way as a building architect sets the principles and goals of a building project as the basis for the draftsman's plans, so too, a computer architect sets out the computer architecture as a basis for the actual design specifications.

There are several usages of the term, which can be used to refer to:

• The design of a computer's CPU architecture, instruction set, addressing modes, and techniques such as SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) and MIMD (multi instruction, multiple data) parallelism.

• More general wider-scale hardware architectures, such as cluster computing and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architectures.

• The less formal usage refers to a description of the requirements (especially speeds and interconnection requirements) or design implementation for the various parts of a computer. (Such as memory, motherboard, electronic peripherals, or most commonly the CPU.)

• Architecture is often defined as the set of machine attributes that a programmer should understand in order to successfully program the specific computer (i.e., being able to reason about what the program will do when executed). For example, part of the architecture are the instructions and the width of operands manipulated by them. Similarly, the frequency at which the system operates is not part of the architecture. This definition reveals the two main considerations for computer architects: (1) Design hardware that behaves as the programmers think it should. (2) Utilize existing implementation technologies (e.g., semiconductors) to build the best computer possible. The latter consideration is often referred to as microarchitecture.

Computer architecture is a specification detailing how a set of software and hardware technology standards interact to form a computer system or platform. In short, computer architecture refers to how a computer system is designed and what technologies it is compatible with.

As with other contexts and meanings of the word architecture, computer architecture is likened to the art of determining the needs of the user/system/technology, and creating a logical design and standards based on those requirements.

A very good example of computer architecture is Von Neumann architecture, which is still used by most types of computers today. This was proposed by the mathematician John Von Neumann in 1945. It describes the design of an electronic computer with its CPU, which includes the arithmetic logic unit, control unit, registers, memory for data and instructions, an input/output interface and external storage functions.

There are three categories of computer architecture: - System Design: This includes all hardware components in the system, including data processors aside from the CPU, such as the graphics processing unit and direct memory access. It also includes memory controllers, data paths and miscellaneous things like multiprocessing and virtualization

-Instruction Set Architecture (ISA): This is the embedded programming language of the central processing unit. It defines the CPU's functions and capabilities based on what programming it can perform or process. This includes the word size, processor register types, memory addressing modes, data formats and the instruction set that programmers use.

- Microarchitecture: Otherwise known as computer organization, this type of architecture defines the data paths, data processing and storage elements, as well as how they should be implemented in the ISA.

Exercise 1. Learn the following words and word-combinations:

motherboard, compatible with, embed, capability, cluster computing, implementation, set out

Exercise 2. Answer the questions:

1) What does a computer architect do?

2) How is architecture often defined?

3) What does the definition reveal?

4) Where does computer architecture refer to?

5) What are the categories of computer architecture?

Exercise 3. Give antonyms to the following words:

1) include; 2) create; 3) input; 4) define; 5) build; 6) understand; 7) successful; 8) common

Exercise 4. Find in the text and give English equivalents to the following words:

1) автор проекту; 2) вживання; 3) вимога; 4) зовнішній пристрій; 5) для того, щоб; 6) виконувати; 7) частота; 8) виявляти; 9) поводитись; 10) взаємодіяти

Exercise 5. Compose a story on one of the topics (up to 100 words):

1) Usages of the term Computer Architecture.

2) Von Neumann architecture.

3) Three categories of computer architecture.