AL ICT Unit 2
AL ICT Unit 2
The first computers had fixed programs and changing a computer program required
physically rewiring or redesigning the machine. This meant that re-repurposing a
computer was a difficult, expensive and time-consuming process. The Mathematician
John Von-Neumann designed the specification for the first programmable computer in
1954, where the programs themselves could be stored in memory, not just data.
Instructions are stored in memory and are retrieved and processed by the Central
Processing Unit one by one. This blueprint is known as the Von-Neumann Architecture.
The process above is repeated indefinitely, and is known as the fetch, decode, execute
cycle.
The CU decodes the instructions retrieved from memory and instructs the ALU to perform
an arithmetic or logic instruction on the data from the decoded instruction
o Addition
o Subtraction
o Division
o Multiplication
o Selection / Branching
o Repetition / looping.
Registers
The registers form part of the CPU Cache, temporarily storing data ready for processing
or send to the RAM.
The program control register stores the address of the current instruction. Once the
current instruction has been fetched and decoded, the program control register changes
to the address of the next instruction.
IR – Instruction Register
The instruction register contains the current instruction itself, retrieved from it’s stored
address.
The memory address register contains the memory location of either the next instruction
to be fetched or the location of where the results of the current process are to be stored.
The memory data register contains either the data retrieved from memory (either an
instruction or an operand) during the current fetch cycle at the address stipulated in the
MAR, or the data the is due to be written to memory.
ACC – Accumulator
The accumulator receives the results of the current process from the ALU and stores it for
the use in the next Fetch-Decode-Execute cycle.
Buses
Buses are the physical wires along which data is passed, both within the CPU itself and
across the motherboard.
CPU Bus
The CPU bus is used to pass data around the CPU between the CU, ALU and registers.
Control Bus
The Control bus sends signals to the RAM, indicating whether to initiate a read or write
on the address received along the address bus
Address Bus
The address bus is the wire along which the address of the memory location in RAM
required for the read/write is sent.
Data Bus
The data bus is the wire along which the data is sent either to or from the RAM (depending
whether a read or write has been initiated.