Micro-Architecture or Computer Organization
Micro-Architecture or Computer Organization
Microarchitecture is the term used to describe the resources and methods used to achieve architecture specification. The term typically includes the way in which these resources are organized as well as the design techniques used in the processor to reach the target cost and performance goals.
Earlier Article: CISC And RISC: Classification of Instruction Set Architecture
What is Micro Architecture?
In computer engineering, microarchitecture (sometime abbreviated to µarch or uarch) is a description of the electrical circuitry of a computer, central processing unit, or digital signal processor that is sufficient for completely describing the operation of the hardware.
Microarchitecture is the fundamental design of a microprocessor. It includes the technologies used, resources and the methods by which the processor is physically designed in order to execute a specific instruction set (ISA or instruction set architecture). Simply put, it is the logical design of all electronic components and data paths present in the microprocessor, laid out in a specific way that it allows for optimal execution of instructions. In academe this is called computer organization.
Micro-Architecture In relation to Instruction Set Architectures
Micro Architecture, also known as Computer Organization, is a lower level detailed description of the system that is sufficient for completely describing the operation of all parts of the computing system, and how they are interconnected and inter-operate in order to implement the ISA.
This describes the data paths, data processing elements and data storage elements, and describes how they should implement ISA. The Micro architecture can be seen as how the ISA does and what it does. It’s how everything is ultimately organized on the chip or processor.
Micro architecture is the term used to describe the resources and methods used to achieve architecture specification. The term typically includes the way in which these resources are organized as well as the design techniques used in the processor to reach the target cost and performance goals. The micro architecture essentially forms a specification for the logical implementation.
Components of Micro-Architecture
Microarchitecture is the logical representation of how a microprocessor is designed so that the interconnections between components – the control unit, the arithmetic logic unit, registers and others – interact in an optimized manner. This includes how buses, the data pathways between components, are laid out to dictate the shortest paths and proper connections. In modern microprocessors there are often several layers to deal with complexity. The basic idea is to lay out a circuit that could execute commands and operations that are defined in an instruction set.
Micro Architecture Techniques
A technique that is currently used in microarchitecture is the pipelined datapath. It is a technique that allows a form of parallelism that is applied in data processing by allowing several instructions to overlap in execution. This is done by having multiple execution pipelines that run in parallel or close to parallel.
Execution units are also a crucial aspect of microarchitecture. Execution units perform the operations or calculations of the processor. The choice of the number of execution units, their latency and throughput is a central microarchitectural design consideration. The size, latency, throughput and connectivity of memories within the system are also microarchitectural decisions.
Another part of a microarchitecture is system-level design. This includes decisions on performance such as level and connectivity of input, as well as output including I/O devices.
Well, that's all on Micro-Architecture. We shall discuss Cloud Computing in the next article. Stay tuned for that.
If you have any queries, doubts or suggestions, please ask questions from the left panel of your screen.
Thank You
