Computer architecture: Difference between revisions

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{{Lead too short|date=November 2023}}

[[File:Computer architecture block diagram.png|alt=|thumb|upright=1.35|Block diagram of a basic computer with uniprocessor CPU. Black lines indicate the flow of control signals, whereas red lines indicate the flow of processor instructions and data. Arrows indicate the direction of flow.]]

In [[computer science]] and [[computer engineering]], a '''computer architecture''' is a description of the structure of a [[computer]] system made from component parts.<ref>{{cite web|last=Dragoni|first=Nicole|title=Introduction to peer to peer computing|url=http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/courses/02220/2017/L6/P2P.pdf|website=DTU Compute – Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science|___location=Lyngby, Denmark|date=n.d.}}</ref> It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Clements|first1=Alan|title=Principles of Computer Hardware|page=1|edition=Fourth|quote=Architecture describes the internal organization of a computer in an abstract way; that is, it defines the capabilities of the computer and its programming model. You can have two computers that have been constructed in different ways with different technologies but with the same architecture.}}</ref> At a more detailed level, the description may include the [[instruction set architecture]] design, [[microarchitecture]] design, [[logic design]], and [[implementation]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hennessy|first1=John|last2=Patterson|first2=David|title=Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach|page=11|edition=Fifth|quote=This task has many aspects, including instruction set design, functional organization, logic design, and implementation.}}</ref>

== History ==

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===Shifts in market demand===

Increases in clock frequency have grown more slowly over the past few years, compared to power reduction improvements. This has been driven by the end of [[Moore's Law]] and demand for longer [[battery life]] and reductions in size for [[mobile technology]]. This change in focus from higher clock rates to power consumption and miniaturization can be shown by the significant reductions in power consumption, as much as 50%, that were reported by [[Intel]] in their release of the [[Haswell (microarchitecture)|Haswell microarchitecture]]; where they dropped their power consumption benchmark from 30–40 [[watt]]s down to 10–20 watts.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/white-paper/resources-xeon-measuring-processor-power-paper.pdf|title=Measuring Processor Power TDP vs ACP|date=April 2011|website=Intel|access-date=5 May 2017}}</ref> Comparing this to the processing speed increase of 3 GHz to 4 GHz (2002 to 2006), it can be seen that the focus in research and development is shifting away from clock frequency and moving towards consuming less power and taking up less space.<ref>{{Cite web |date=24 April 2012 |title=History of Processor Performance |url=https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/classes/2012/3827-spring/advanced-arch-2011.pdf |access-date=5 May 2017 |website=cs.columbia.edu}}</ref>

==See also==

{{Portal|Electronics}}

{{cmn|colwidth=30em|

* [[Bit-serial architecture]]

* [[Comparison of CPU architectures]]

* [[Computer hardware]]

* [[CPU design]]

* [[Dataflow architecture]]

* [[Floating point]]

* [[Flynn's taxonomy]]

* [[Harvard architecture]] ([[Modified Harvard architecture|Modified]])

* [[Influence of the IBM PC on the personal computer market]]

* [[Orthogonal instruction set]]

* [[Reconfigurable computing]]

* [[Software architecture]]

* [[Transport triggered architecture]]

* [[Von Neumann architecture]]

}}

==References==