Integrated Circuit Design Flow
The process of integrated circuit design can be divided into stages: system design, logic design, circuit design, layout design, fabrication and testing. More ...
Change Raspberry Pi Default Configuration
If you are a US user of the Raspberry Pi, you will discover that when you type, the characters displayed do not match our keyboard. When you type [shift][#] instead you get the British pound symbol. This is because Raspbian (and NOOBS) defaults to UK keyboard settings. More ...
How Computer Memory Works
Every program being executed and every piece of data being manipulated must be copied from a storage device, such as a magnetic disk, into main memory. It's important to understand the basic types of memory. More ...
Multicore Programming
A recent trend in system design is to place multiple computing cores on a single chip. Each core appears as a separate processor to the operating system. We call these multicore or multiprocessor systems. More ...
Pentium P5 Processor
The Pentium P5 processor was introduced in 1993 was the first superscalar processor. It featured two integer pipelines and a pipelined floating-point unit. This article describes other innovations introduced in the P5. More ...
Microprocessor Counter, Clock, Timer Circuits
All the circuitry in the microprocessor, in fact all the circuitry on the motherboard require a clock signal for operation. The clock signal is the heartbeat of the system. Without a clock signal, the microprocessor and the computer are dead. More ...
Pi-Top kit - Build Your Own Laptop
Computer hobbyists has been building their own desktop computers since the mid 1980's, but I know of no laptop kits, until now. The Pi-Top is a kit that lets you build your own laptop. More ...
Simplified Windows Architecture Overview
A simplified overview of the Windows operating system architecture divides it into user-mode and kernel-mode components. More ...
Intel's Sandy Bridge Micro-Architecture
"Sandy Bridge" is Intel's code name for a new cpu core microarchitecture. It introduces a few new or improved features. The memory controller, the PCI Express controller, and video circuitry are all located within the processor die and the new ring architecture uses a Last Level Cache between the CPU and graphics cores. More ...
Interrupt Request Lines (IRQs)
What happens when the CPU (Central Processor Unit) is busy doing something, like defragmenting the hard disk, and you press a key on the keyboard? An interrupt (IRQ) is a connection between a hardware device and the CPU. A hardware device uses it's assigned IRQ line to signal or interrupt the CPU when it needs attention. More ...
Intoduction to Digital Electronics
The entire field of computer technology relies on transistors. This article describes how transistors are constructed and how modern MOSFETs are combined to make digital logic circuits. More ...
Operating System Memory Management
Computers must keep several programs in memory, creating a need for memory management. Many different memory-management schemes are used. The operating system Keeps track of which parts of memory are currently being used, and moves data into out of memory, and allocates and deallocates memory as required. More ...
