All Questions
Tagged with hardware computer-architecture
14
questions
-1
votes
1
answer
209
views
Is it viable to use imprecise analog computers to simulate equally artificial intelligence?
I was searching about simulation of artificial intelligence, machine learning and subjects alike and saw the news that some startups around of the world are using analog computers to simulate ...
- 117
1
vote
3
answers
451
views
Do multiple software-threads on a single hardware-thread system execute sequentially?
I understand that if a system consists of multiple hardware-threads the scheduler
assigns software-threads to hardware-threads.
However, hypothetically, let's imagine a system that does only consist ...
11
votes
1
answer
14k
views
How does the Base Address Registers (BARs) in a PCI card work?
I am trying to understand how the Base Address Registers (BARs) in a PCI card work, this is how I think they work:
Each function in a PCI card have 6 BAR fields, and each BAR field is
32-bit in size.
...
- 2,039
2
votes
1
answer
273
views
What does "data bus control" mean?
This video mentions the following:
What does it mean for the DMA controller to be granted the data bus control, does that mean the CPU cannot use the bus to access memory and IO devices until the DMA ...
- 2,039
1
vote
3
answers
1k
views
Can the CPU manipulate the pins of an IO port directly?
Based on what I know so far, when you plug an IO device into an IO port (for example, when you plug a printer into a parallel port), the printer will be represented to the CPU as just another RAM chip....
- 247
4
votes
1
answer
5k
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How data is accessed in Memory-Mapped I/O?
This is an example of Memory-Mapped I/O:
So basically you access the device controller registers through memory.
Now my question is, when you for example write to the memory location that maps to ...
- 247
1
vote
1
answer
318
views
Can an IO device have some memory space or can it only have registers?
I am learning about IO devices, and so far I have only seen examples of IO devices that have registers and no memory space. For example, this is a printer that have three registers and no memory space:...
- 247
3
votes
3
answers
8k
views
Are "Control register" and "Status register" and "Data register" part of the device itself?
I am studying about Memory-Mapped I/O from here. I have read the following:
From the CPU's perspective, an I/O device appears as a set of
special-purpose registers, of three general types:
...
- 247
5
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Why isn't exponentiation hardware-implemented?
Why is there no exponentiation operation in hardware, even though many languages have builtin operators for it?
Is it because even hardware implementations would need to use the same algorithm as ...
- 341
19
votes
2
answers
22k
views
How long is a typical modern microprocessor pipeline?
I learnt some about pipelining but those were 4-stage and 5-stage and I think that modern pipelining typical is much longer and more complicated in practice. How long are typical pipelines and how ...
- 8,058
2
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Can we illustrate a CPU pipeline with a UML sequence diagram?
I study multicore pipelining and the diagrams are not UML sequence diagrams for instance
Why not remake this diagram like an UML sequence diagram, would not that be more clear so that we can see ...
- 8,058
7
votes
1
answer
444
views
Hardware that accelerates pointer dereferencing?
Most modern languages make a heavy use of pointers / references: a typical OOP language uses VMT lookups, a typical functional language builds key data structures out of pointers, etc. Even typical C ...
- 24.3k
1
vote
2
answers
571
views
How Do Computers Process Conditional/Input/ Event Based Code? [duplicate]
I understand that computers are basically a complex system of electrical signatures that can calculate based on logic boards, and some sort of gate mechanism, but how do computers process something ...
- 111
15
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Can increased usage of higher and higher programming languages lead to a deficit of programmers with computer architecture knowledge?
Quote from Wikipedia of the article "High-level programming language":
A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In ...
- 17.4k