I&C SCI 51 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Arithmetic Logic Unit, Processor Register, Instruction Register

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Information and Computer Science
• Course: I&C SCI 51
• Professor: Shannon Alfaro

Document Summary

This level contains gates, each of these gates have one or more input (0 or 1) and they"re built of a handful of transistors. A small number of gates can be combined to form a 1-bit memory. These 1-bit memories can be combined in groups (16, 32, or 64) to form registers and each register can hold a single binary number up to some limit. At this level, a collection of typically 8 to 32 registers that form a local memory and a circuit called an alu (arithmetic logic unit), which can perform simple arithmetic operations. The registers are connected to the alu to form a data path, over which the data flows. On some machines the operations of the data path is controlled by a program called the microprogram. While in other machines the data, path is directly controlled by the hardware.