Input Output Organization

IO Interface
 IO Interface

 IO interface provides a method for transferring

information between internal system (CPU) and
external I/O devices.
 I/O devices can not directly communicate with the
CPU due to various differences between them.
Significance of I/O Interface
I/O Bus and Interface Modules
 I/O bus is attached to all peripherals.
 Interface monitors the address on address bus.
 If it find its own address, it activates path between
bus line and device.
 All the other devices are disabled by their interfaces.
 Data to read or write is made available in the data
bus.
 IO command is made available in the control bus.
 There are four types of IO command:
 Control Command

 Status Command

 Output Data Command

 Input Data Command

 IO versus Memory bus

 Like IO bus Memory bus also contain data, address

and control lines.
 There are two ways in which computer bus
communicates with memory and IO.
 1. Use two separate buses, one for memory and other
for I/O (Isolated I/O)
 Use one common bus for memory and I/O common
control lines (Memory Mapped I/O)
 In the first method, CPU has independent set of
buses for both memory and IO. It is done in
computers that has separate IOP and CPU.
 In second method computers use common bus to
transfer data between IO or memory and CPU.
 This configuration isolates all I/O interface address
with the memory address and is referred to as
Isolated IO method.
 In memory mapped method, same address space is
used for both memory and IO interface. They have
only one set of read and write signals.
 Computer treats interface as being part of the
memory system.
 It assign address for each interface which cannot be
used for memory words which reduces the memory
address range available.
 This configuration is referred to as memory-
mapped IO.
 Modes of transfer

 Data transfer between computer and IO device can

be handle in the following ways:
 Programmed IO
 Interrupt-Initiated IO
 Direct Memory Access(DMA)
 Programmed IO

 Each data transfer is initiated by an instruction in

the program.
 CPU stays in the program loop until IO unit indicates
it is ready for the data transfer.
 It is time consuming process since it keeps processor
busy needlessly.
Example of programmed IO
 The transfer of data requires three instructions:
Flow chart of programmed I/O from e-book
 Interrupt Initiated IO

 In this type of IO, computer does not check the flag.

It continue to perform its task.
 Whenever any device wants the attention, it sends
the interrupt signal to the CPU.
 CPU then deviates from what it was doing, store the
return address from PC and branch to the address of
the subroutine.
 There are two ways of choosing the branch address:
 Vectored Interrupt

 Non-vectored Interrupt

 In vectored interrupt the source that interrupt the

CPU provides the branch information. This
information is called interrupt vectored.
 In non-vectored interrupt, the branch address is
assigned to the fixed address in the memory.
 Direct Memory Access(DMA) (11.6)

 In DMA there is direct communication between

memory and the peripheral devices.
 Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of
modern computer systems that allows certain
hardware subsystems to read/write data to/from
memory without microprocessor intervention,
allowing the processor to do other work.
 Typically, the CPU initiates DMA transfer, does other
operations while the transfer is in progress, and
receives an interrupt from the DMA controller once
the operation is complete.
 BR(Bus Request) signal is used by DMA controller to
request CPU for the buses.
 CPU then places the bus on the high impedance state
which behave like open circuit.
 CPU then activates BG(Bus Grant) signal to
acknowledge BR signal.
 DMA now has full control over the buses and
perform the transfer.
 Transfer can be perform in two ways:
 Burst Transfer

 Cycle Stealing

 In burst transfer, a number of memory word is

transfer in a continuous burst. It is done while
communicating with fast devices and can’t be
stopped or slow down.
 In cycle stealing, one data word is transfer at a time.
 CPU delays it operation for one cycle.
DMA Controller
 DMA Controller

 It communicates with CPU through data bus and

control lines.
 Registers in DMA are selected by CPU by enabling
DS and RS.
 RD and WR signals are for read and write operation.
 When BG=0 CPU can communicate with DMA
register for read or write operation.
 When BG=1 DMA communicate directly with the
memory.
 DMA Controller

 It has three register: address, word count and control

register.
 Address register contain address which specify the
location of memory to read or write.
 It is incremented after each word is transferred into
memory.
 Word count register holds the number of words to be
transferred.
 It is decremented by one after each word is
transferred into memory and regularly check for
zero.
 Control Register specify the mode of transfer.
 DMA is first initialized by CPU. After that DMA
continue to transfer data.
 CPU initialize the DMA by sending the following
information through the data bus:
 Starting address of memory block for read or write.
 The word count or number of words to read or write.
 Control to specify mode such as read or write.
 Control to start DMA
 Once DMA is initialized, CPU stop communicating
with DMA unless it receive interrupt signal or if it
wants to check how many words has been
transferred.