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 ...
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 ...
CPU Process Memory Address Binding
For a program to run on a CPU it must be brought from files in long-term, non-volatile storage to main memory. Addresses in the source program must be mapped to addresses in main memory. More ...
How Computer Chips are Made
The oxygen is removed from silica by heating it with carbon. A tiny seed of silicon is then dipped into molten silicon. As the tiny crystal is slowly lifted out of the crucible silicon crystallizes around it. More ...
ARM Cortex-A72 Registers
16 registers r0 - r15 are accessable in the ARM Cortex-A72 user mode. In addition part of the CPSR (Current Program Status Register) is accessable. That part is the APSR (Application Program Status Register) which contains conditional status bits. More ...
Computer Video Display
If you view a computer as an input-processing-output machine, you can use a keyboard or removable storage device as the input, a program as the processing, but what can you use to retrieve the output? One way to acquire the output, be it text or graphics, is with a video display. More ...
Digital to Analog Convertion with a Microcontroller
Digital to analog conversion (DAC) is the process by which a digital signal (expressed as a string of 1s and 0s) are converted to an analog signal (a continuously varying voltage). More ...
Microcontroller Registers
Registers are special small memory locations where the microcontroller can write data to or read data from. Special function registers help point to main memory locations, indicate the result of a mathematical operation, hold parts of an instruction or indicate the status of some operation or hardware feature. Some registers are general purpose and may be used by the programmer at their own discretion. More ...
Virtual Memory and Memory Paging
In the early days of computers, memory chips were small capacity, scarce, and expensive. Because of this a memory management scheme called paging was invented. More ...
Operating System Processes
An Operating System Process is a program in execution. It includes the value in the program counter and in the processors registers. A process also includes a stack, data section, and a heap. More ...
The Microcontroller Interrupt System
Events related to peripheral interfaces are asynchronous to the program running on the CPU. The interrupt mechanism allows an external event to temporarily put the normal execution of the microcontroller on hold and force the execution of a specific subroutine. More ...
Arduino Microcontroller Development Platform
The benefit of the open source Arduino Microcontroller Development Platform is that the software is free and the hardware is cheap. This makes it one of the cheapest platforms on which to develop prototypes. More ...
