tailieunhanh - Hardware and Computer Organization- P15

Hardware and Computer Organization- P15:Today, we often take for granted the impressive array of computing machinery that surrounds us and helps us manage our daily lives. Because you are studying computer architecture and digital hardware, you no doubt have a good understanding of these machines, and you’ve probably written countless programs on your PCs and workstations. | Chapter 15 Today there s a third alternative. With so much processing power available on the PC many printer manufacturers are significantly reducing the price of their laser printers by equipping the printer with the minimal intelligence necessary to operate the printer. All of the processing requirements have been placed back onto the PC in the printer drivers. We call this phenomenon the dual- Slower Faster ity of software and hardware since either or both can be used to --------------- I solve an algorithm. It is up to the system architects and designers to decide upon the partitioning of the algorithm between software slow low-cost and flexible and hardware Hardware Software Inexpensive Costly Lower power consumption Increased power consumption Programmable Inflexible Figure Hardware software trade-off. fast costly and rigidly defined . This duality is not black or white. It represents a spectrum of trade-offs and design decisions. Figure illustrates this continuum from dedicated hardware acceleration to software only. Thus we can look at performance in a slightly different light. We can also ask What are the architectural trade-offs that must be made to achieve the desired performance objectives With the emergence of hardware description languages we can now develop hardware with the same methodological focus on the algorithm that we apply to software. We can use object oriented design methodology and UML-based tools to generate C or an HDL source file as the output of the design. With this amount of fine-tuning available to the hardware component of the design process performance improvements can become incrementally achievable as the algorithm is smoothly partitioned between the software component and the hardware component. Overclocking A very interesting subculture has developed around the idea of improving performance by overclocking the processor or memory or both. Overclocking means that you deliberately run the clock at a higher speed then .