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 ...
AMD's Phenom Processor
AMD released the first Phenom processor in 2007. Unlike Intel's Core 2 Quad processors, which are a multi-chip module (MCM) design, AMD's Phenom processors had all cores on the same silicon die. More ...
Electronic Circuits Basics
This article's main target is to teach the electronics language to readers that are not familiar with electronics by using a group of rules and simple equations that describe the behavior of every electronic component and the relationship between the components in the circuit. More ...
Fundamental Digital Logic Gates
All the advanced features of the most powerful computers, such as mulicore and parallel processing are done with digital logic. In this article I explain the fundamental concept of digital logic in simple and clear language so that anyone can understand it. More ...
Microcontrollers
A microcontroller is an IC that contains a microprocessor as well as RAM, ROM and general I/O ports. Engineers design microcontrollers into specific-purpose devices such as microwave ovens, cars, washing machines, refridgerators, and even space probes. More ...
CPU Chip Packaging
Over the development time of the computer, several different designs of packaging for the CPU chip die have been used. Each type of packaging has its advantages and disadvantages. This article reviews some common packages that might still be in use. More ...
Introduction to the Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a tiny bare-bones computer motherboard. You can easily make it into a Linux PC by connecting your own keyboard, mouse, and display. 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 ...
The AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor
The Athlon 64 X2 is the first dual-core CPU manufactured by AMD.
It is essentially two Athlon 64 cores on one die joined together with additional control logic. The cores share one dual-channel memory controller. The benefit of dual-core processors is their ability to process more software threads at the same time. However, many programs are written with only one thread. More ...
Real-Time CPU Scheduling
In a real-time systems, is one whose operation depends on timing. A task must be serviced within a specific time interval. The tasks and their execution times must all be known. 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 ...
