Operating Systems Hardware Components

CIS 320, Fall, 2011

Objectives
Explain operating system hardware components and their key characteristics Describe the basic features and system architecture of popular PC processors Understand how hardware components interact with operating systems

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Understanding CPUs
The system architecture of the computer is built around the CPU
System architecture includes the number and type of CPUs in the hardware, and the communications routes (buses) between CPUs and other hardware components

CPU chip that performs the actual computational and logic work Core section of the processor that actually does the reading and execution of instructions
Processors originally only had one core Multicore processor has two or more cores

Multiprocessor computers have multiple physical CPU chips

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Understanding CPUs
CPU hardware elements:

Design type Data bus

Cache Address bus

Speed

Control bus

Design Type
Two general CPU designs:
CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) pronounced sisk RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) pronounced risk

Main difference
number of different instructions the chip can process

Instruction set
the list of commands the CPU can understand and carry out

CISC Characteristics
How a CISC CPU operates
When the CPU gets a command it assigns specific instructions to different parts of the chip When a command is finished and the next command is received, the CPU uses the same parts of the chip it used before

Advantages of CISC:
Only needs general-purpose hardware to carry out commands versus hardware designed for a specific purpose Chip is driven mainly by software, which is cheaper to produce

Disadvantages of CISC:
Complexity of on-chip software needed to make the hardware do the right thing The need to continually reprogram the on-chip hardware CISC chips can be a little slower than RISC chips
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CISC Characteristics (Continued)

CISC CPU
Because general hardware is used, functions will not be executed in the most efficient way Hardware modules can be added that are optimized to perform certain functions Example A math coprocessor can be added in order to help perform all computational functions
CPU performance is increased Increases price
Math co-processors originally a separate chip now often part of the CPU chip

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RISC Characteristics
Advantages
Has smaller instruction set, and uses these small instructions to put together more complex operations Hardware only needs to support the smaller instruction set, in theory should cost less With small instructions, the system can pipeline pipelining - allows the processor to operate on one instruction at the same time it is fetching one or more subsequent instructions

Disadvantages
May require more instructions to complete a given high level request Intel / CISC owns the market share
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Design Type

CISC versus RISC processing

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Does Pipelining help here?

1. C := A + B; F := D + E; I := G + H; L := I + J; 2. A := B + C; A += D; A += E; A += F A+=G
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CISC vs RISC
Waters are becoming more muddied CISC based CPUs (intel) adopting many features of RISC and RISC based chips expanding their instruction sets.
E.g. with a math co-processor a CISC CPU can pipeline mathematical computations Some use of pipelining in CISC CPUs, but less effective due to longer instructions & more varied instruction lengths

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Simultaneous Multithreading
A superscalar processor executes more than one instruction during a clock cycle by simultaneously dispatching multiple instructions to redundant functional units on the processor. Each functional unit is not a separate CPU core but an execution resource within a single CPU such as an arithmetic logic unit, a bit shifter, etc.

(IF = Instruction Fetch, ID = Instruction Decode, EX = Execute, MEM = Memory access, WB = Register write back, i = Instruction number, t = Clock cycle [i.e., time])
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RISC EPIC
The RISC processor design has evolved into a concept called Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC)
Created as joint project by Intel and Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enables the processor to handle massive numbers of operations simultaneously by implementing large storage areas and executing parallel instruction sets Chip can predict and speculate which operations are likely Can support up to 256 64-bit registers Reduces or eliminates bottlenecks at the processor

Intels Itanium chip

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RISC-based EPIC processors (continued)

Can build three instructions into one word A word is like a single communication with the processor CISC and traditional RISC use one instruction per word EPIC instructions can be combined into instruction groups, consisting of multiple words
It attempts to execute all of the instructions in one group at the same time

Thus, making the RISC-based EPIC processor much faster than CISC and traditional RISC chips
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Speed
Internal clock speed is the most obvious indicator
clock provides this to make sure that all the chips know what to expect at what time tells you how many clock pulses, or ticks, are available per second

External clock speed

CPUs also must be able to communicate with the other chips in the computer lower clock speed to communicate with the rest of the computer

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Cache
Since the internal clock of a CPU is faster than the external clock the CPU would have to wait on information to arrive from other parts of the computer Most modern CPUs have cache memory built into the chip
This memory is extremely fast and typically runs at the same speed as the processor Cache memory is referred to as level 1 (L1) cache Some CPUs have two or more levels of cache memory, called level 2 (L2) cache
Normally runs at the same speed as the external CPU clock
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Cache
In many cases, up to 90% of data the CPU needs to transfer to and from memory is present in the L1, L2/L3 cache Cache controller predicts what data will be needed and makes the data available in cache before it is needed Intelligent, fast cache controllers and large amounts of L1, L2, and L3 help increase the speed of a CPU

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 Main memory is 5-10 times slower than CPU, so as CPU accesses memory, delays occur
CPU Main Memory Direct Access Storage

Solution: Add faster (more expensive) memory

onto CPU (L1, small amount, fast and expensive) between CPU and Main Memory (L2, larger amount) Leads to cache replacement algorithms, read ahead algorithms performed by the cache controller

L1 Cache 128 KB CPU L2 Cache 1 4 MB Main Memory Direct Access Storage

Address Bus
Address Bus internal communications pathway that specifies the source and target addresses for memory reads and writes
Typically runs at the external clock speed of the CPU Width of the address is the number of bits that can be used to address memory
Wider bus means the computer can address more memory and store more data

Older PCs use a 32-bit address bus

Allows them to address 4 billion (4 GB) memory addresses

Many newer processors use a 64-bit address bus

Allows them to address 16 terabytes (TB) of memory
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Data Bus
The data bus allows computer components, such as CPU, display adapter, and main memory, to share information The number of bits in the data bus indicates how many bits of data can be transferred from memory to the CPU in one clock tick
A CPU with an external clock speed of 1 GHz and a 64-bit data bus could transfer as much 8 GB per second

A CPU with a 64-bit data bus typically can perform operations on 64 bits of data at a time
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Control Bus
Information is transported on the control bus to keep the CPU informed about the status of resources and devices connected to the computer Memory read and write status is transported on this bus, as well as interrupt requests
Interrupt request (IRQ) a request to the processor to interrupt whatever it is doing to take care of a process, which in turn might be interrupted by another process

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CPU Scheduling
CPU Scheduling determines which process to start given the multiple processes waiting to run Beginning with Windows NT, the use of CPU scheduling algorithms began to evolve to allow multithreading
Multithreading is the ability of a single application to run two or more processes (known as threads) at the same time

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Popular CISC PC Processors

Intel 16 /32 / 64 bit CISC, began with 8088 in original PC and most popular today, even in Apple and SUN AMD directly compete with Intel CISC

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Popular PC Processors

Single-core Intel CPUs

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Popular PC Processors

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Popular PC Processors

Multicore Intel CPUs

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What are the Trends in PC Processors?

Bus sizes?
Address bus, Data bus, Control bus

Internal & external Clock speeds?

Differences in speeds?

Cache
Levels, size, location

# of Cores?

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Popular RISC based Processors

Motorola 68000 series obsolete 32 bit CISC in older MACs, others SPARC Scalable Processor Architecture
A RISC processor designed by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) SPARC T3 is the current version of the SPARC processor
A 64-bit chip with 64-bit address and data buses

Alpha 64 bit RISC chip developed by DEC PowerPC 32 & 64 bit RISC chips, developed jointly by IBM, Motorola, and Apple Computer Intel Itanium

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Intel Itanium
The Intel Itanium processor is a significant departure from previous Intel processors in two aspects:
built on the RISC-based EPIC architecture and it is a 64-bit chip

intended for very large-scale operations that match powerful mainframes

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Itanium Sales Forecasts

Never really took off as projected Windows/red Hat discontinuing support for itanium

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CPU Market Shares

CISC based Intel & AMD dominate in # of units RISC based and EPIC much smaller share, but tend to be more prevalent in mid-range servers RISC based ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) processors dominate the embedded device/cell phone market
And are used in the Raspberry Pi

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Chapter Summary
Hardware and operating systems are interrelated because in many ways they grew up together. Processor hardware improvements have marched steadily from the early 8088 chip to the modern 64bit multicore processors. Operating systems paralleled these changes to take advantage of the capabilities at each stage of development. The early computer operating systems were well suited to the early processors. As processors became faster and more advanced, so did operating systems. Today, 64-bit processors provide a foundation for contemporary Windows, Mac OS X and Unix/Linux operating systems to take advantage of their high-speed networking and multimedia capabilities. Multicore processors bring greater capabilities and functionality to server operating systems.
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