AMD's Microarchitectures
A microarchitecture describes the physical features, functions, and the technology level of the processes used to manufacture the core of a microprocessor. This article describes the microarchitectures used by AMD. More ...
CPU Process Scheduling
CPU scheduling is the basis of multiprogrammed operating systems. By switching the CPU among processes, the operating system can make the computer more productive. More ...
Introduction to Computer System Main Memory Operation
The CPU can be shared by a set of processes. Using CPU scheduling, we can improve the utilization of the CPU and the speed of the computer's response. To realize this increase in performance, multiple processes must be kept in memory. 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 ...
AMD Sempron Processor
The Sempron replaced the Duron as AMD's budget processor. The socket A Sempron is basically an Athlon XP with half the cache. The socket 754 Sempron is a cut down version of the Athlon 64 processor with half the cache. More ...
Intel's Core i7 Processors
Core i7 is a family of Intel quad core processors, that is, they have four processors on a single silicon chip. All four processor cores and all memory caches, including a 64K L1 cache, a 256K L2 cache, and a shared L3 cache are located on one chip. The memory is also located on the same chip. More ...
Binary Number Representation and Binary Math
Computers perform all of their amazing work with only two voltage levels, one representing binary 0, the other representing binary 1. This article describes how to perform binary addition and subtraction. More ...
Multithreaded Programming Process' and Threads
A process generally has a complete, set of private resources, each process has its own memory space. Threads exist within a process, every process has at least one. Threads share the process's resources, including memory and open files. More ...
The AMD Athlon 64 Processor
AMD's Athlon 64 processor, released in September 2003, was their first 64-bit processor targeted for the workstation market to compete with Intel's Pentium 4. AMD's first 64-bit processor was the Opteron, released earlier in April that same year, targeted for the server market to compete with Intel's Xeon processor. More ...
Operating System Memory Paging - Page Table Structure
One method of memory management is to break physical memory into fixed size blocks and break logical memory into same sized blocks called pages. The physical location of pages is tracked by a page table. More ...
Introduction to Microprocessor Programming
Assembly language involves using instructions that are mnemonics called opcodes, along with values and/or addresses in hexadecimal notation. To make learning as easy as possible, we'll first learn how to program a simple microprocessor, the 6502. 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 ...