|
Bit-level Parallelism
Bit-level parallelism is a form of parallel computing based on increasing processor word size. Increasing the word size reduces the number of instructions the processor must execute in order to perform an operation on variables whose sizes are greater than the length of the word. (For example, consider a case where an 8-bit processor must add two 16-bit integers. The processor must first add the 8 lower-order bits from each integer, then add the 8 higher-order bits, requiring two instructions to complete a single operation. A 16-bit processor would be able to complete the operation with single instruction.) Originally, all electronic computers were serial (single-bit) computers. The first electronic computer that was not a serial computer—the first bit-parallel computer—was the 16-bit Whirlwind from 1951. From the advent of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) computer chip fabrication technology in the 1970s until about 1986, advancements in computer architecture were do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Computing
Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different forms of parallel computing: Bit-level parallelism, bit-level, Instruction-level parallelism, instruction-level, Data parallelism, data, and task parallelism. Parallelism has long been employed in high-performance computing, but has gained broader interest due to the physical constraints preventing frequency scaling.S.V. Adve ''et al.'' (November 2008)"Parallel Computing Research at Illinois: The UPCRC Agenda" (PDF). Parallel@Illinois, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The main techniques for these performance benefits—increased clock frequency and smarter but increasingly complex architectures—are now hitting the so-called power wall. The computer industry has accepted that future performance inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word (data Type)
In computing, a word is any processor design's natural unit of data. A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits in a word (the ''word size'', ''word width'', or ''word length'') is an important characteristic of any specific processor design or computer architecture. The size of a word is reflected in many aspects of a computer's structure and operation; the majority of the registers in a processor are usually word-sized and the largest datum that can be transferred to and from the working memory in a single operation is a word in many (not all) architectures. The largest possible address size, used to designate a location in memory, is typically a hardware word (here, "hardware word" means the full-sized natural word of the processor, as opposed to any other definition used). Documentation for older computers with fixed word size commonly states memory sizes in words rather than by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
8-bit Computing
In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors. The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the best known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets especially Latin 1 for English and Western European languages. The IBM System/360 introduced byte-addressable memory with 8-bit bytes, as opposed to bit-addressable or decimal digit-addressable or word-addressable memory, although its general-purpose registers were 32 bits wide, and addresses were contained in the lower 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16-bit Computing
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (216 − 1) for representation as an ( unsigned) binary number, and −32,768 (−1 × 215) through 32,767 (215 − 1) for representation as two's complement. Since 216 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed. As of 2025, 16-bit microcontrollers cost well under a dollar (similar to close in price legacy 8-bit); the cheapest 16-bit microcontrollers cost less than other types including any 8-bit (and are more powerful, and easier to program generally), making 8-bit legacy microcontrollers not worth it for new applications ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integer
An integer is the number zero (0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number (−1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative integers. The set (mathematics), set of all integers is often denoted by the boldface or blackboard bold The set of natural numbers \mathbb is a subset of \mathbb, which in turn is a subset of the set of all rational numbers \mathbb, itself a subset of the real numbers \mathbb. Like the set of natural numbers, the set of integers \mathbb is Countable set, countably infinite. An integer may be regarded as a real number that can be written without a fraction, fractional component. For example, 21, 4, 0, and −2048 are integers, while 9.75, , 5/4, and Square root of 2, are not. The integers form the smallest Group (mathematics), group and the smallest ring (mathematics), ring containing the natural numbers. In algebraic number theory, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serial Computer
A serial computer is a computer typified by bit-serial architecture i.e., internally operating on one bit or numerical digit, digit for each clock signal, clock cycle. Machines with serial main storage devices such as acoustic or magnetostrictive Delay-line memory, delay lines and drum memory, rotating magnetic devices were usually serial computers. Serial computers require much less hardware than their bit-parallel counterparts which exploit bit-level parallelism to do more computation per clock cycle. There are modern variants of the serial computer available as a soft microprocessor which can serve niche purposes where the size of the CPU is the main constraint. The first computer that was not serial and used a parallel bus was the Whirlwind I, Whirlwind in 1951. A serial computer is not necessarily the same as a computer with a 1-bit architecture, which is a subset of the serial computer class. 1-bit computer instructions operate on data consisting of single bits, whereas a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whirlwind (computer)
Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era List of vacuum-tube computers, vacuum-tube computer developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the United States Navy, U.S. Navy. Operational in 1951, it was among the first digital electronic computers that operated in real-time for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems. It was one of the first computers to calculate in Bit-level parallelism, bit-parallel (rather than serial computer, bit-serial), and was the first to use magnetic-core memory. Its development led directly to the Whirlwind II design used as the basis for the United States Air Force Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, SAGE air defense system, and indirectly to almost all business computers and minicomputers in the 1960s, particularly because of the mantra "short word length, speed, people." Background During World War II, the United States Navy, U.S. Navy's Naval Research Lab app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
4-bit Computing
4-bit computing is the use of computer architectures in which integer (computer science), integers and other data (computer science), data units are 4 bits wide. 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on processor register, registers or bus (computing), data buses of that size. A group of four bits is also called a nibble and has 24 = 16 possible values, with a range of 0 to 15. 4-bit computation is obsolete, i.e. CPUs supporting 4-bit as the maximum size. However, 4-bit integers (or smaller), and 4-bit floating point is gaining ground for AI, large-language models. 4-bit processors were widely used in electronic calculators and other roles where decimal math was used, like electronic cash registers, microwave oven timers, and so forth. This is because a 4-bit value holds a single binary-coded decimal (BCD) digit, making it a natural size for directly processing decimal values. As a 4-bit value is generally too ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
32-bit Computing
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculations more efficiently and process more data per clock cycle. Typical 32-bit personal computers also have a 32-bit address bus, permitting up to 4 GiB of RAM to be accessed, far more than previous generations of system architecture allowed. 32-bit designs have been used since the earliest days of electronic computing, in experimental systems and then in large mainframe and minicomputer systems. The first hybrid 16/32-bit microprocessor, the Motorola 68000, was introduced in the late 1970s and used in systems such as the original Apple Macintosh. Fully 32-bit microprocessors such as the HP FOCUS, Motorola 68020 and Intel 80386 were launched in the early to mid 1980s and became dominant by the early 1990s. This generat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
X86-64
x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new four-level paging mechanism. In 64-bit mode, x86-64 supports significantly larger amounts of virtual memory and physical memory compared to its 32-bit computing, 32-bit predecessors, allowing programs to utilize more memory for data storage. The architecture expands the number of general-purpose registers from 8 to 16, all fully general-purpose, and extends their width to 64 bits. Floating-point arithmetic is supported through mandatory SSE2 instructions in 64-bit mode. While the older x87 FPU and MMX registers are still available, they are generally superseded by a set of sixteen 128-bit Processor register, vector registers (XMM registers). Each of these vector registers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bus (computing)
In computer architecture, a bus (historically also called a data highway or databus) is a communication system that transfers Data (computing), data between components inside a computer or between computers. It encompasses both Computer hardware, hardware (e.g., wires, optical fiber) and software, including communication protocols. At its core, a bus is a shared physical pathway, typically composed of wires, traces on a circuit board, or busbars, that allows multiple devices to communicate. To prevent conflicts and ensure orderly data exchange, buses rely on a communication protocol to manage which device can transmit data at a given time. Buses are categorized based on their role, such as system buses (also known as internal buses, internal data buses, or memory buses) connecting the Central processing unit, CPU and Computer memory, memory. Expansion buses, also called peripheral buses, extend the system to connect additional devices, including peripherals. Examples of widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
