6.FROM THE P.O.V OF A COMPUTER SCIENTIST

“Everything intelligent is so boring.” ―Leo Tolstoy,Anna karenina

Hearing and learning a lot from the past and diving deep into the channels of "The world of microprocessors " now lets hear a few opinion from the trespassers about this world.

From the point of view of a computer science engineering student microprocessors are not a main stream area of study.But the interesting fact is that without understanding the basics of the microprocessors they won't be able to code or enhance the underlying machine.The machine needs a language which it can understand, if you want to make it understand your  ideas in a different way, you need to either modify yourself or enhance the machine. To increase the performance with out modifying the underlying machine can cause your effort just 'waste'.

For students interested in Embedded systems may feel the need for understanding microprocessors in depth.But what about others?

One of the emerging areas in computer science is BIG DATA .To handle a large quantity of data we use Hadoop and other tools.Even NoSQL data bases are developed to cut away the limitations  of the file formats.The data handling can be done much better if the underlying machine can fasten the process.There comes the importance of microprocessors for computer science students.

Another area, Artificial intelligence requires highly effective and powerful microprocessors to run their programs.Since they expect a real time processing, the more powerful the system the more accurate the result.

Similarly,Artificial neural Networks and genetic algorithms expect  optimization and approximate results which require proper processing.

What ever be the area of your study, the foundation that help you to develop your idea will be void with out microprocessors.

Microprocessors have traveled a long way and now they can be found even in your heart...

..Hey...No, I am n't  a romantic  poet ..i was just telling about pacemaker ...

....The  labyrinth laid out shows the complex features of microprocessors  but the one who understands it and moves on with his eye on the finishing line can surely win the race ....Its time the tale teller start her journey to find another pair of eyes that is in search of the hidden island-"The world of microprocessors" ...

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5.ADVANCEMENTS IN MICROPROCESSORS

INTEL IN NEWS

CLEAN UP YOUR DESK..

The desk that once used to hold all the components began to fall and the now the compact and more advanced laptops have taken their place.

It is indeed  a great advantage for the people to accommodate and establish a compact and sophisticated place for working on their machines.

The place once utilized by the peripherals that stuck out of place,is indeed a horrible experience.The latest technologies have made  a huge shift by including all in one..

That is to follow the old saying -"Old wine in a new bottle" 

CORES

The concept of cores have appealed the scientists greatly.With the ability to work more efficiently and not tireing  the machine,cores could not have done better.This ensures the smooth working and also the life of the system.

Each core can concentrate on different works such that parallel working is allowed.When more power is required all the cores can support it. That is " work on demand". 

INTEL AND NASA 

Intel and NASA have joined hands together for  the latest Mars mission.

The Mars mission required highly precise equipments  that can tolerate the ambiance and can work under tedious conditions.
NASA had no other better choice than to use Intel 's support and experience to accomplish this risky task.

Now its a joke that if the mars inhibitants happens to see a  rover they will chant  "Intel inside"..

INTEL CELEBRATED 45TH BIRTHDAY ON JULY 28

On July 18th Intel turned 45.
It was the celebration of an era that witessed the change that the world had undergone.
Intel once again proved their motto "Think" and emerged to be a name that the whole world would carry for the years ahead.






INTEL GAVE A SURPRISE TO THE WHOLE WORLD 

"In just a few days, the tech world will be watching 25.03318, 121.560847."

This was the news that flashed across internet and many googled to find what it was..All the searches and results pointed out to a conventional center..

The whole world waited patiently to watch another miracle offered by Intel.And as usual they announced forth generation Core i7 Extreme processors, including flagship six-core i7-4960X model.

Yet another feather in Intel's crown.

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4.C.INTERFACING OF MICROPROCESSOR

•Operation of basic I/O operations is to act as an interface.

•Decode 8-, 16, and 32-bit addresses for enabling I/O ports

•The basic input device is a set of three-state buffers.

•The basic output device is a set of data latches.

•The term IN refers to moving data from the I/O device into the microprocessor and

•The term OUT refers to moving data out of the microprocessor to the I/O device.

•Handshaking for I/O operations

•Interface and program the 82C55 PPI (programmable parallel interface)

•Using the 82C55 to connect LCDs, LEDs, keyboards, ADCs, DACs, etc. to the processor

•Interface and program the 16550 programmable serial interface adapter

•Interface and program the 8254 programmable interval timer

•Interface DC and stepper motors to the processor

•Two types:

  - Transfer data between the processor accumulator (AL, AX, EAX) register and I/O device: IN and OUT

  - Transfer string data between memory and I/O device directly: INS and OUTS (for processors above 8086)

  IN and OUT:

•The IN instruction (I/O Read): Inputs data from an external I/O device to the accumulator.

•The OUT instruction (I/O Write): Copies the contents of the accumulator out to an external I/O device.

•The accumulator is:

  - AL (for 8-bit I/O),

  - AX (for 16-bit I/O),

  - EAX (for 32-bit I/O).

•As with memory, I/O devices have I/O addresses    (addresses for the I/O port)

•Up to 64K I/O bytes can be addressed  

•The 16-bit port address appears on address bus bits A15-A0          

 This allows I/O devices at addresses 0000H-FFFFH

•Two ways to specify an I/O port address:

  - An 8-bit immediate (fixed) address (specified as a byte in the instruction): e.g. IN AX, p8     ; Reads a word from port p8

    0000H-00FFH (can only see the first 256 addresses)

  - A 16-bit address located in register DX (can be easily varied): e.g. OUT DX, AL; outputs the byte in AL to the port whose address is in DX

    0000H-FFFFH (upto 16K addresses). i.e. high port addresses are accessible only through DX addressing

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4.B. PROGRAMMING A MICROPROCESSOR

...Its through the language and culture that a society breaths..

.. to understand the world of microprocessors and to communicate with them one must know their language and model...

The figure above shows the programming model of 8085 microprocessor. 

LANGUAGE OF A MICROPROCESSOR:

Microprocessor cannot understand a program written in Assembly language.A program known

as Assembler is used to convert a Assembly language program to machine language.

Another general concept is that of an addressing mode. We have seen three addressing modes so far. They are:

1. Data Register Direct. The operand is in a register.
e.g., MOVE D0,D1 ;both operands
2. Immediate Data. The operand appears in the instruction.
e.g., MOVE #1,D1 ;left operand only
3. Absolute. The memory address of the operand appears in the instruction.
e.g., MOVE 1000,2000 ;both operands

INSTRUCTION SET

The instruction set consists of 74 operation codes and 246 Instructions.The instructions can be 

classified as

1.Data Transfer (Copy)

MOV-Move the contents of specified registers

OUT/IN -Copy between Input/Output Port and Accumulator

2.Arithmetic

ADD-Add contents of specified register  to Accumulator

SUB-Subtract a 8-bit number from Accumulator

ADI-Add a 8-bit number  to  accumulator

SUI-Subtract a 8-bit number from accumulator

INC-increment the contents of specified Register  by 1

DCR-decrement the contents of specified Register  by 1

3.Logical and Bit manipulation

          AND two 8-bit numbers

          OR two 8-bit numbers

          Exclusive-OR two 8-bit numbers

          Compare two 8-bit numbers

          Complement

          Rotate Left/Right Accumulator bits

4.Branch

          Jumps

              •Conditional jumps

              •Unconditional jumps

          Call & Return

               •Conditional Call & Return

               •Unconditional Call & Return

5.Machine Control

   HLT  Stop program execution

   NOP  Do not perform any operation

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4.A. ARCHITECTURE OF MICROPROCESSOR

This figure shows the Intel family of microprocessors bus and memory sizes.The memory size have increased through the various processors and similarly the data bus width and address bus width.

 General purpose registers are:

The top portion of the programming model contains the general purpose registers:EAX, EBX, 

ECX, EDX, EBP, ESI, and EDI

It can carry both Data & Address offsets

Although general in nature, each has a special purpose and name:

EAX – Accumulator   Used also as AX (16 bit),            AH (8 bit), and AL (8 bit)

EBX – Base Index often used to address memory (BX, BH, and BL)

ECX – count, for shifts, rotates, and loops (CX, CH, and CL)

EDX – data, used with multiply and divide (DX, DH, and DL)

EBP – base pointer used to address stack data (BP)

ESI – source index (SI) for memory locations, e.g. with string instructions

EDI – destination index (DI) for memory locations

The special purpose register are:

ESP, EIP, and EFLAGS

  Each has a specific task

–ESP – Stack pointer: Offset to the top of the stack in the stack segment. Used with procedure calls (SP)

–EIP – Instruction Pointer: Offset to the next instruction in a program in the code segment (IP)

–EFLAGS – indicates latest conditions (state) of the microprocessor (FLAGS)

The major EFLAGS are:

•C – Carry/borrow from last operation

•P – the parity flag (little used today)

•A – auxiliary flag Half-carry between bits 3 and 4,

  used with BCD arithmetic

•Z – zero

•S – sign

•O – Overflow

•D – direction - Determines auto increment/decrement direction for SI and DI registers with string instructions

•I – interrupt - Enables (using STI) or disables (using CLI) the processing of hardware interrupts arriving at the INTR input pin of the processor

•T – Trap - Turns trapping interrupt (for program debugging) on/off

The segment registers are:

•The segment registers are:

–CS (code),

–DS (data),

–ES (extra data. used as destination for some string instructions),

–SS (stack),

–FS, and GS: Additional segment registers on 80386 and above

•Segment registers define the start of a section (segment)     of memory for a program. 

•A segment is either:

  - 64K (216) bytes of fixed length (real mode), or

  - Up to 4G (232) bytes of variable length (protected mode).

•All code (programs) reside in a code segment.

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4.CORE CONCEPTS OF MICROPROCESSORS

".....You cannot open a book without learning something.so lets open the doors to the labyrinth that greets us.."

The core concept of microprocessors is the Moore's law which was just a statement for Moore but for the world it tuned out to be a law that will determine the price-performance breakthrough.

In 1965, Gordon Moore,  co-founder of Intel with Robert Noyce, made the prediction related to the price-performance criteria . He stated that "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year".This statement received wide acceptance and was used for almost half a century as Moores law.It was later refined and revised.Today it states, broadly, that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double roughly every two years.The microprocessors  price-performance breakthrough could be predicted using this law.And even in the early days, he says, Intel's progress was out-performing Moore's law.

Before we move on with the programming side of our tale one must have a deep knowledge in Von Neuman stored program principle.It is the basis of computer programming. The principle includes :

a) We have to store the computer program, which is nothing but the set of instruction and computer executes them one other another as per the program requirement.

b) We have to store the program (i.e. set of instructions) in computer memory. The starting address of the program must be specified which executing the program and it is loaded into the program counter. After that program counter keeps track of the execution of the program till the end of the program.

c) Every program must be end with a stop or terminating instruction, otherwise the control unit will keep on fetching information from memory. Once it encounters a halt or stop instruction, execution stops.

Keeping these magic quotes in your mind lets move on to tame the wildest part of microprocessors -programming.

For the basic concepts of a microprocessor you can visit the next posts:a)Architecture b)Programmingc)Interfacing

...The book is now open ..the one who do not travel through it remains idle..

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3.FIRST MICROPROCESSOR

The Intel 4004 Microprocessor

The invention of the transistors was  a major milestone in the development of the microprocessors.The integrated chip could  greatly improve the use for transistors, but the problem was  that it could  do only what it was originally programmed to do. To change programs, think and store was out of equation.

Robert Noyce, the founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, had patented the silicon chip and intended to establish his reign in the field . The start up company "Integrated Electronics" aka  "Intel" was the seed sower of microprocessor .



Intel 4004 cpu - Interior

 In November, 1971 when a Japanese company named BUSICOM asked Intel  to have twelve custom chips designed. Separate chips for keyboard scanning, display control, printer control and other functions for a Busicom-manufactured calculator.Intel had to make the chips  and Ted Hoff got his chance..

When all the scientists believed that the possibility of a computer on a chip was not practicable and that the IC technology could not handle this, it was Ted who believed that he could improve the chips by squashing most of their functions onto a single central processing unit. Fortunately , he was the first person to recognize that the new silicon-gated MOS technology might make a single-chip CPU (central processing unit) possible and attempted the design.

The design of the first microprocessor was done by Ted and Frederico Faggin converted the design to the prototype.The result was a four-chip system, based around the Intel 4004 microprocessor. The process was a tiering and development works were to lengthy that BUSICOM was ready to let go the project. By understanding the value of the new invention Intel gained the ownership of the new chip and decided to gain the markets by developing components that used their product. The market gain thus obtained for Intel was remarkable which lead to further researches and developments in microprocessors. Thus Ted Hoff witnessed the birth of microprocessors and a new dawn.That first chip was called the 4004. The  architecture had just over 2,300 transistors in an area of only 3 by 4 milli metres etched into the silicon.

The Intel 4004 chip took the integrated circuit down one step further by placing all the parts that made a computer think (i.e. central processing unit, memory, input and output controls) on one small chip. Programming intelligence into inanimate objects had now become possible.  And all by itself it was as powerful as ENIAC computer built in 1946. But the size was a factor that had to be changed.The later researches were mainly based on decreasing the size of the microprocessors and increasing its capacity.

The main features of 4004 was  its 4-bit CPU, command register, decoder, decoding control, control monitoring of machine commands and interim register, which was then a miracle. Today's 64-bit microprocessors are still based on similar designs, and the microprocessor is still the most complex mass-produced product.

In 2010 US President Barack Obama presented Ted with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his contributions in the development of a new era.

Indeed, what world witness today is the power of thinking of a one man army supported by a group of tech enthusiasts. 

Sometimes great dreams for a life time can change the perspective of the whole world....For that you just need to open your eyes and look into yourself..

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2.EVOLUTION OF MICROPROCESSORS

..When the storyteller recites the tales he must sing about those period of time when the heroes fall and new one arise...In the world of microprocessor also , this tale teller will make you walk through those phases to get a better understanding about transformations.We will start from where we have left our story....

EXIT OF  A HERO.

After the breakthrough of the first microprocessor 4004, Intel decided to expand its wings to other areas such that the usage of 4004 was boosted. The need for more advanced and developed Integrated chips began to make Intel think about the need to do research in this field.

The four bit microprocessor debuted in early video game systems and small microprocessor based control systems.Speed, word width and memory were the problems associated with the first microprocessor.

• » 4-bit microprocessor
• » 740 KHz
• » 4 KB program memory
• » 640 bytes data memory
• » 3-level deep stack
• » No interrupts

IN MEMORY OF THE LOST  HERO????

To control the inefficiencies of  4004 Intel came with the much more reliable and high speed 4040.When Intel introduced 4040 as  a new renewed version of 4004 there was no much improvements in the word width and memory size but it had high speed when compared to its successor.
In short 4040 had :

» 4-bit microprocessor

•     » 740 KHz
•     » 2 x 4 KB program memory
•     » 640 bytes data memory
•     » 7-level deep stack
•     » No interrupt
•    » 4004 object-code compatible

RISE OF A LEGEND...

In 1971 when Intel understood the market games, and made microprocessors a viable commercial product.

The constant motivation to gain the market lead Intel to advance with the research ideas.Intel released 8008 microprocessor.It addresses an expanded memory size 16KB and contained additional instructions that provided opportunity for its application in various fields.

• » 8-bit microprocessor
• » 16 KB memory
• » Interrupts

Even this new Hero could not satisfy the needs of the engineers when they began to make the full use of 8008.



A NEW FAMILY TAKES UP THE REIGN...

The impact lead of 8008 lead to the advent of  a new family of eights..8080,8800,8085.

8080 addressed more memory and executed additional instructions, that is about 10 times faster than 8008. Since 8080 was more compatible with TTL technology it made the interfacing process less expensive . 

Altier 8800 was a newcomer to this family. Developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Microsoft it opened a new challenge to its colleagues.

8085 can be considered as the revised version of 8080. Although slightly more advanced than 8080 , it executed software at an even higher speed .The main advantage of 8085 was:the internal clock generator , internal system controller and high clock frequency. 

These improvements are responsible for ushering in the era of 8080 and continuing saga of the  microprocessor.

RULES CHANGES THUS THE TALE..

The rules changed and thus the phase of transition.The arrival of 80286,32 bit microprocessors,80486,pentium processors were the predecessors.

80286 MICROPROCESSOR

It was a 16 bit architecture microprocessor and is identical to 8086 and 8088.The main difference was in the memory addressed by the system.It addressed about 16M-byte of memory and thus increasing the speed of execution and instruction sets.

Some changes were made at internal execution of the instructions, which led to an eight fold increase in speed for many instructions when compared to 8086/8088 instructions.

32-BIT MICROPROCESSORS 

Applications began to demand faster microprocessor speed, more memory and wider data paths.This lead to the emergence of 80386 in 1986.It was the first practical 32-bit microprocessor that contained 32 bit data bus and 32-bit memory address.Thus upto 4G bytes of memory were addressed.Its also called an Embedded PC because it had all the components that a AT class personal computer on  a single integrated circuit.

80486 MICROPROCESSORS

In 1989 Intel released its 80486 microprocessor which incorporated 80387 like numeric processor and 80386 like microprocessor and an 8K byte cache memory.The internal structure of the 80486 was modified from the 80386 so that about half of its instructions executed in one cycle instead of two.

PENTIUM PROCESSORS

The pentium processors were developed by Intel in 1993 , keeping in mind to combine the 80386 and 80486 microprocessors.It was actually denoted as P5 ot 80586.The major improvements were in the cache size where 16K bytes of cache can be seen.The world had still too much to witness after the rise of Pentium.To understand in detail we must travel to the core.

.........When we all think that the tale ends here..at this point....Be aware about the games of destiny. Because the tale has not yet started ,this was just giving you an idea about the place where I am taking you..I am leaving you here at this cliff hanger..until then lets enjoy the tales of microprocessors.But promise you to take  to the real world of microprocessors..which lay hidden from behind the shadows.........

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1. INTO THE WORLD OF MICROPROCESSORS

...When the history unfolds, it reveals  the story of people who lived a life devoted to their passion.Its through the history that a new generation develop and nourish their ideas.Without understanding the past , a  present cannot be created. The tales of history reincarnate...  

This is the story of a weapon that the mankind has been using and will use to extend his power not only in this planet but also in the whole universe. Here is the tale of Microprocessors......

To understand and enjoy this tale the story teller must take you  to the time when the Babylonians invented the abacus -the first mechanical calculator,with which the world witnessed the spark of a revolution. 

As William Goldman says, who can sense revelation in the wind?(Princess Bride). Abacus was long lost in the memory, as a string of beads to perform calculations, but the impact it had left is much more than expected..

Following the footsteps of abacus when Blaise Pascal invented his calculator with gears and wheels, the world was set into motion. In 1800s when the world witnessed the dawn of computer age,humans began to dream about mechanical machines that could compute numerical facts with a program,not merely a calculation.

In 1937 Charles Babbage with Lady Ada invented the forefather of computers,which could generate navigational tables for the Royal Navy of Britain.The historians remember it as a  mechanical computer which had a variable program and could calculate much better than the previous ones.

That was how the mechanical age helped in the upbringing of microprocessors to its current  stage.

Now lets travel to 1970s where the advent of electric motors have given an electric shock to the whole world .There we can find the developed version of small hand held electronic calculator called Bomar Brain.They were the first electrically driven mechanical calculators .

 Mechanical machines driven by electrical motors continue to dominate the information processing world.Then the world tasted the goodness of the joint venture of mechanical and electrical science ..Colossus,Enigma,ENIAC.Those machines could perform only about 100,000 operations per second. The ENIAC thus thrust the world into the age of electronic computers.

Breakthroughs that followed were the development of the transistors on December 23 , 1947at Bell Labs .This was followed by the 1958 invention of Integrated Circuits by Jack Kilby of Texas instruments.The integrated circuits lead to the development of digital integrated circuit RTL or Resistor to resistor logic in the 1960s and the first microprocessor at Intel in 1971.Its the device that  started the microprocessor revolution that continues today at an even accelerating pace.

From the strings of beads to the infinitesimal  microprocessors, the world had reinvented itself to accommodate the changes...

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7.LATEST ANDROID NEWS

NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

• It was predicted that Google Android Sales will Overtake iPhone in 2012 and the predictions came to be  true.

• Intel doesn’t want to lose ownership of the netbook market, so they need to prepare for anything, including Android

• Fujitsu launched an initiative to offer consulting and engineering expertise to help run Android on embedded hardware, which aside from cellphones, mobile internet devices, and portable media players, could include GPS devices, thin-client computers and set-top boxes.

• Google executive Huga Barra said that Google's Nexus family of devices will be the first to get the new version of Jellybean Android 4.3, but the Google Play Edition phones will have to wait a little while.

• Amazon is reportedly working on developing an Android-operated gaming console (like the Ouya) scheduled to be released by this year.

• The next Android OS Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie is expected to launch in October 2013 alongside the new Nexus 10 tablet.

• Intel unveils 2 android based tablets for education purpose.

• A new app has been developed for iOS and Android devices that will protect Twitter users' accounts from hackers and other attackers.

•  Android won an astonishing 79% of the global smart phone market in Q2 with 187 million devices shipped; Apple sold 31 million iPhones  but its market share fell to 13%.

• Googe play store beats Apple App store in app downloads but not in revenue.

•  After $5,720 worth of Bitcoins were stolen using Android security flaw, Google engineers now warn devs to avoid JCA after “random” number generator produces duplicates.

•  A mobile port of LibreOffice is “frustratingly close” to completion, but needs additional support to make it onto Android , hence  LibreOffice devs are seeking Android's help.

• Android founder Andy Rubin,the man behind the smartphone operating system will focus on new projects at Google, and makes way for  Google Chrome’s Sundar Pichai Chrome VP. 

NEWS FROM OUR MOTHERLAND

• Indian Government especially Ministry of External Affairs, has now entered into the world of smart phones with the launch of interactive app for Android and iOS devices.If you want to apply for a passport, check your passport status or ask any query to MEA ,then this app will surely save your time.

• Narendra Modi fans have come up with a new dual-SIM Android mobile phone " Smart Namo " dedicated to the Gujarat CM.

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