CMPT 295 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Random-Access Memory, Central Processing Unit, A Black Box

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Computing Science
• Course: CMPT 295
• Professor: Brad Bart

Document Summary

A black box is employed to abstract the function of a device. A computer is composed of: central processing unit (cpu) Executes instructions as part of a program within ram. Random access means accessing any data within it takes constant time regardless of where the last data was accessed. A volatile storage device (needs constant source of power) Can be viewed as an array of bytes: m[0n-1] By comparison: voluminous, long-range, and slow e. g. mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, mic, printer, network card. A set of wires to communicate between the above pieces. Designed to transfer fixed chunks of data: word size. Decide what part of program to run next based on some test (if-else, loop, function call) 1(cid:1010) are used e(cid:454)pli(cid:272)itl(cid:455): ra(cid:454), r(cid:271)(cid:454), r(cid:272)(cid:454), rd(cid:454), rsi, rdi, rsp, r8, , r1(cid:1009) From register to memory (store) e. g. mov %rdi, %rax # rax