Evolution of Computers

• ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, is the first

electronic computer.
 Vaccum tubes and relays
 5000 additions or subtractions per second.
 ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a “Giant
Brain”
 ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays,
70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered
joints. It weighed 27 tons, was roughly 63 m2, and consumed 150 kW of
power
 Each digit used 36 vacuum tubes.
 Rewiring was necessary for modification to the existing operations.
 EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the
earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was
binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program machine.
 Von Neumann a consultant at Moore School designed this first conceptual
stored program computer
 The EDVAC was a binary serial computer with automatic addition,
subtraction, multiplication, programmed division and automatic checking
with a memory capacity of 1,024 words, thus giving a memory, in modern
terms, of 5.5 kilobytes.
 EDVAC's addition time was 864 microseconds and its multiplication time
was 2900 microseconds (2.9 milliseconds).
 The computer had almost 6,000 vacuum tubes and 12,000 diodes, and
consumed 56 kW of power. It covered 45.5 m² of floor space and weighed
7,850 kg.
 Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator Developed by Maurice
Wilkes at Cambridge University in England and completed in 1949.
 It was one of the first stored program computers and one of the first to use
binary digits.
 Its memory was 512 36-bit words of liquid mercury delay lines, and its
input and output were provided by paper tape.
 The EDSAC could do about 700 additions per second and 200
multiplications per second.
 It was in routine use at the university until 1958.
 A memory technology in some of the earliest computers that used an
acoustic delay line. For example, in the 1940s and 1950s, the memory in
the EDSAC was made of tubes of liquid mercury that were several feet
long.
 Sound Travels Slower than Electricity
 At one end of the tube, a transducer converted the electrical pulses to
sound, which propagated through the mercury to the other end. At that
point, another transducer converted the sound to electricity and sent it
back to the beginning. The conversion to sound, which propagates much
 slower than electricity, slowed down the digital data a fraction of a second
and caused the device to function as storage

 Von Neumann designed a new, unique and feasible architecture called the
Von Neumann Architecture. All modern computers still use this
architecture.
 It consists of five basic elements : input, memory, control unit , arithmetic
logic unit(ALU) and output.

 To execute instructions computer performs the following steps:

 Control unit reads or fetches an instruction from memory and
decodes or translates it.
 Control unit generates enable signals for the ALU to perform the
required operation.
 For I/O instructions : control unit generates enable signals for the
I/O either to input data from or output data to external devices.
 Von Neumann architecture allows storing of instructions and data in the
same memory.
 Control unit was designed using a hard wired approach with a instruction
decoding capability of 64 opcodes.
Whirl wind
 Designed by MIT in 1951.
 It has 16 bit word length with 27 opcodes.
 Capable of performing 20,000 instruction in 1sec.
 In 1951 first tape based system Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)
was released.
 In 1954 IBM announced first drum based computer called the IBM 650.
 With drum based computers use of assemblers, compilers, and other
system oriented programs became feasible.
 Processor Development
 In 1969 Intel corporation designed first micro processor, it is a 4 bit device
4004.
 In 1970 microprocessors became popular.
 After Intel Motorola launched 8 bit processors 6800/6809.
 Intel 8080/8085 was the microprocessor that provided the basis of future
trends in 8 bit micro processors.
 A typical 8bit processor consisted of 8k to 16k of main memory for
program and data storage.
Hardware:
 It refers to physical components of a computer.
 CPU
 Memory
 RAM
A hardwire program cannot be changed by a programmer
Software :
 It consists of a collection of programs.
 Programs contain a sequence of instructions for performing a specified
task.
Firmware:
 It consists of programs that are included in electronic circuits during their
manufacture.
 Some of the important feature of many operating systems are
accomplished these days using firm ware rather than software.
 Firm ware provides faster execution time, better system security, and cost
reduction in the are if software development.
 Firm ware in general is called a Micro program.
 Micro program is held in a separate memory called Control memory.
 Concept of firm ware is called Micro programming.
 Micro program facilitates the implementation of hardware and is called
Firmware.
 OS interfaces between a user’s program and the hardware and provides a
variety of services and supervisory functions.
 It handles basic input and output operations.
 Allocating storage and memory.
 Sharing the computer among multiple applications using it simultaneously.
Basic stored program computer Architecture
 Computer is an electronic device capable of processing information.
 Stored program computer has instructions and data held in the same
memory.
 Instruction execution takes place with in the CPU and is controlled by the
control unit.
 Tasks performed by the control unit :
 Instruction interpretation.
 Instruction sequencing
  In instruction interpretation phase the control unit reads an instruction and
recognizes the instruction operation code.
 Retrieves the required operands or data items and performs the desired
operation by activating the ALU.
 Next instruction to be executed immediately follows the memory where
the current instruction is held.
 In exceptional cases sequential control flow is not possible:
 Branch Instruction
 Subroutine calls
Memory
 Primary Memory
 Secondary memory
 Primary memory is called executable memory as any program in this
memory can be executed by the CPU. It can be further divided to RAM and
ROM.
 To reduce the usage of primary memory and to reduce the cost secondary
memory is used which includes magnetic disks and tapes.
 All the elements are connected by a bus called as
 Address bus
 Data bus and control bus

Computers can be classified to three groups

 General register based
 Accumulator based
 Stack oriented machines
General Register Machine

 Eight General registers R0 to R7.

 Registers can be used to hold data, memory addresses or the results of
arithmetic and logical operations.
 SP pointer is used to hold the address of the top element of the stack.
 Flag register, it holds zero flag, carry flag generally updated after
executing arithmetic or logic instruction.
 General register processors support three and two address instructions.
Eg : Instruction Operation
ADD X,Y,Z Z <- (X) + (Y)
MUL X,Y,Z Z <- (X) * (Y)
Two address instructions
Eg : Instruction Operation
MOV Y,X X<- Y
MUL Y,X X <- (X) * (Y)

Accumulator based Processor

  One of the operands is assumed to be held in the accumulator register for

arithmetic and logical operations.

 Results of all arithmetic and logical operations are routed to the

accumulator.

 Single address instructions are very predominant in this organization.

LDA X: Acc <- X

DIV X: Acc <- Acc/X

 Rockwell’s M6502 and Motorola’s MC6809 are accumulator based

processors.

 MC6809 processor chip contains two 8 bit accumulator registers : ACCA,

ACCB.

 Two registers may be combined to form one 16 bit accumulator.

 Three Address : MUL B,C,D : D<- B*C.

 Two Address: ADD A,D: D<- A +D.

 One Address: MUL C: Acc <- Acc *C.

Stack Oriented Processor

Stack Oriented Processor

 Stack machine is a computer sys tem in which the primary element of the

CPU is a stack.

 Stack is a Data structure where data items are inserted and removed from

the same end, stack posses the LIFO property.

 Stack is used to implement subroutine calls and returns and to pass

parameters from a main program to a subroutine.

 To Handle interrupts.

 Primary advantage of stack organization is manipulations can be carried

out at a high speed.

 RAM is used to create a stack.

 SP points to the top of the stack.

 Main application of stack machine is its efficient evaluation of complicated

arithmetic expressions.
  A programmer can simulate the behavior of the stack machine on these

processors by a suitable program

Working of a stack

Contents

 Data representation

 Fixed point and

 IEEE format floating point number representation

 Data is represented in a computer by means of binary sequence which are

organized into words.

 A word is a unit of information of fixed length and can be viewed as a

sequence of binary coded characters.

 Initial 6bit character codes are used to represent 26 alphabets 10 decimal

digits and 28 special characters .

  In recent 8 bit binary sequence called bytes.

 Two BCD digits can be in an 8 bit field with no wasted space.

 ASCII is widely used 8 bit character code.

Data Types

 Data can be divided to numerical and non-numerical.

 Numerical computation has great deal of attention in the development of

number codes.

 Other formats of number system are fixed point and floating point.

 These are represented by binary, decimal.

 Non-numerical data usually take the form of strings encoded in ASCII.

Error detection and correction

 Faulty components and design tolerances can result in errors appearing in

the information that is being transmitted between two peripherals.

 Noise in the communication channel can result in corrupted data.

 Error correction can be done with the help of a single check bit called

parity bit.

 Multiple errors cannot be detected with the parity bit and no information

about the location of the erroneous bit.

 SECDED - Single Error Correcting Double Error Detecting Codes .

 Hamming code for memory protection

Number Formats

 Numbers to be represented in a computer : integer, real and complex.

 Precision of number which refers to the maximum accuracy of the

representation.

Cost of hard ware to store and process the information

Binary numbers
  This is a positional notation in which each digit has a fixed weight

according to the position relative to the decimal point.

 Most fundamental number representation used in computers employs

radix 2.

 When used in signed number convention of a n-bit word, the nth bit

represents the sign of number and remaining bits indicate the magnitude.

 Other way of representing the signed numbers is one’s complement (bit

wise operation) and Two’s complement.

 Main advantage of these codes is that subtraction can be performed by

logical complementation and addition of a 1 bit.

 Multiplication and division are difficult to implement if two’s complement

is used rather than signed magnitude.

 If the result of an arithmetic operation involving signed n-bit number is

large to be represented by n bits overflow is said to occur.

Decimal Numbers

 Normal usage is decimal arithmetic .

 Numbers being entered into a computer must first be converted from

decimal to binary form.

 Binary to decimal conversion is done at the computers output process.

 Decimal codes are available to allow rapid conversion from binary to

decimal. eg: BCD code

 Excess three code has the advantage that it may be processed using the

same logic used for binary codes.

 Two out of five code containing two 1’s and 3 zero’s, it has the merit of

single error detection

 Decimal codes has two disadvantages

  Uses more bits to represent a number than the binary codes

requiring more space.

 Circuit required to perform arithmetic using decimal numbers is

more complex than that needed for binary arithmetic.

Floating point numbers

 Generally used for scientific computations which require very large and

very small numbers.

 Terminology associated with floating point number 1.0*109 where 1.0 is

Mantissa, 9 is the exponent and 10 is the base.

THE IEEE 754 standard floating point number

 In 1980’s floating point number codes varied from one computer to other.

 Program transfer between different machines resulted in roundoff errors

and the treatment of overflow and underflow conditions.

 IEEE standardized format for 32 and 64 bit floating point numbers known

as IEEE 754 standard.

 32 bit standard comprises of 23 bit mantissa field M, 8 bit exponent field

and a sign bit.

 IEEE floating point std addresses subtle problems of overflow, underflow

and other exceptional conditions.

 These std formats are intended to set flags in the host processor which

can be used for error control.

 If the result of a floating point number is not a valid floating point number

then a special code referred to as Not a Number (NaN)is used.

 64 bit std contains a sign bit , 7 bit exponent field and a 56bit mantissa .