The Greatest Ideas in Computer Architecture
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Moore’s Law - Integrated Circuits resources double every 18-24 months
- Prediction in 1965 by Gordon Moore, Founder of Intel
- Design with future of technology in mind vs present of technology
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Represented by the graph below
[caption id=“attachment_209” align=“aligncenter” width=“341”]
‘up and to the right’ graph[/caption]
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Abstraction - Represent the design at different levels of representation
- Increases productivity and decreases design time
- Lower levels details are hidden to make it simple = higher level details
[caption id=“attachment_223” align=“aligncenter” width=“348”] abstract painting[/caption]
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Common Case Efficiency - Enhance efficiency more than the efficiency of rare cases
- Experimentation and measurement is required
- Fast sport cars versus fast minivan?
[caption id=“attachment_235” align=“aligncenter” width=“346”] Jaguar F-Type[/caption]
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Parallelism Efficiency - Performing operations in parallel
- Increases performance
- Represented by the jet engines on a plane below
[caption id=“attachment_242” align=“aligncenter” width=“344”] Dual engines on jet[/caption]
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Pipelining Efficiency - Pattern of parallelism
- Has a particular sequence with different stages
- Represented by ventilation in data centers
[caption id=“attachment_250” align=“aligncenter” width=“348”] Air ventilation of data centers[/caption]
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Prediction Efficiency - Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission
- As long as prediction is not expensive and is accurate
- Represented by the sky for weather forecasting
[caption id=“attachment_258” align=“aligncenter” width=“346”] Weather forecasting based on clouds[/caption]
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Memory Structure - Required to be fast, large, and cheap
- Memory speeds hinders performance while capacity limits unsolvable issues
- Memory is one of the most expensive component in computers
- Cache versus Random Access Memory (RAM) versus Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
- Represented by a pyramid with cache at the top and HDD at the bottom
[caption id=“attachment_268” align=“aligncenter” width=“344”] Pyramid memory structure[/caption]
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Redundancy Dependency - Components for detecting and resolving failures
- Moral of the story is that any device can fail
- Represented by emergency procedures when flying a plane
[caption id=“attachment_282” align=“aligncenter” width=“349”] Emergency procedure for crashed plane[/caption]