INTRODUCTION TO THE MICROPROCESSOR were stored in the computer memory system as

AND COMPUTER groups of instructions called a program.

- Mathematician John von Neumann was the first
A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND modern person to develop a system that accepted
• The Mechanical Age instructions and stored them in memory. Computers
- Abacus, the first mechanical calculator are often called von Neumann machines in honor of
- 1642, when mathematician Blaise Pascal invented a John von Neumann.
calculator that was constructed of gears and wheels. - the UNIVAC became available in the early 1950s
- the PASCAL programming language is named in - Assembly language was used to simplify the chore
honor of Blaise Pascal for his pioneering work in of entering binary code into a computer as its
mathematics and with the mechanical calculator. instructions. The assembler allows the programmer to
- In 1937 it was discovered through plans and journals use mnemonic codes, such as ADD for addition, in
that one early pioneer of mechanical computing place of a binary number such as 0100 0111.
machinery was Charles Babbage, aided by Augusta - 1957, when Grace Hopper developed the first high-
Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace. level programming language called FLOWMATIC,
- Analytical Engine, was a steam-powered mechanical - The IBM developed FORTRAN (FORmula
computer that stored a thousand 20-digit decimal TRANslator) for its computer systems. The FORTRAN
numbers and a variable program that could modify the language allowed programmers to develop programs
function of the machine to perform various calculating that used formulas to solve mathematical problems.
tasks. (similar language introduced about a year after
- Joseph Jacquard, a Frenchman who used punched FORTRAN, was ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language).
cards as input to a weaving machine he invented in - The first truly successful and widespread
1801, which is today called Jacquard’s loom. programming language for business applications was
• The Electrical Age COBOL (COmputer Business Oriented Language).
-1970s, when the small handheld electronic - Some of the more common modern programming
calculator, first introduced by Bomar Corporation and languages are BASIC, C#, C/C++, Java, PASCAL,
called the Bomar Brain. and ADA. The BASIC and PASCAL languages were
- In 1889, Herman Hollerith developed the punched both designed as teaching languages but have
card for storing data. The punched cards used in early escaped the classroom.
computer systems are often called Hollerith cards. - The ADA language is used heavily by the
The 12-bitcode used on a punched card is called the Department of Defense. The ADA language was
Hollerith code. named in honor of Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of
- Mechanical machines driven by electric motors Lovelace.
continued to dominate the information processing • The Microprocessor Age
world until the construction of the first electronic - The world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004,
calculating machine in 1941. was a 4-bit microprocessor– programmable controller
- A German inventor named Konrad Zuse, who on a chip.
worked as an engineer for the Henschel Aircraft - A bit is a binary digit with a value of one or zero. A
Company in Berlin, invented the first modern 4-bit- wide memory location is often called a nibble.
electromechanical computer.

- Most calculators are still based on 4-bit

microprocessors that process 4-bit BCD (binary-
- Collosus, This first electronic computing system, coded decimal) codes.
which used vacuum tubes, was invented by Alan - 1971, realizing that the microprocessor was a
Turing. commercially viable product, Intel Corporation
- The first general-purpose, programmable electronic released the 8008—an extended 8-bit version of the
computer system was developed in 1946 at the 4004 microprocessor.
University of Pennsylvania. This first modem - A byte is generally an 8-bit-wide binary number and
computer was called the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical a K is 1024. Often, memory size is specified in K
Integrator and Calculator) bytes.
- 4004 microprocessor, the device that started the - The BASIC language interpreter, written for the
microprocessor revolution that continues today at an Altair 8800 computer, was developed in 1975 by Bill
ever-accelerating pace. Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft
• Programming Advancements Corporation.
- The first such language, machine language, was
constructed of ones and zeros using binary codes that
- In 1977, Intel Corporation introduced an updated - The Pentium Pro processor contains 21 million
version of the 8080. The 8085 was to be the last 8-bit, transistors, integer units, as well as a floating-point
general-purpose microprocessor developed by Intel. unit to increase the performance of most software.
The Modern Microprocessor The basic clock frequency was 150 MHz and 166
- In 1978, Intel released the 8086 microprocessor; a MHz in the initial offering made available in late 1995.
year or so later, it released the 8088. Both devices are - The Pentium II microprocessor (released in 1997)
16-bit microprocessors, which executed instructions in represents a new direction for Intel. Instead of being
as little as 400 ns (2.5 MIPs, or 2.5 millions of an integrated circuit as with prior versions of the
instructions per second). microprocessor, Intel has placed the Pentium II on a
- A 1M-byte memory contains 1024K byte-sized small circuit board.
memory locations or 1,048,576 bytes. - 1998 Intel announced a new version of the Pentium
- The 80286 microprocessor (also a 16-bit II called the Xeon,6 which was specifically designed
architecture microprocessor) was almost identical to for high-end workstation and server applications.
the 8086 and 8088, except it addressed a 16M-byte - The Pentium III microprocessor uses a faster core
memory system instead of a 1M-byte system. than the Pentium II, but it is still a P6 or Pentium Pro
- The 32-Bit Microprocessor, The 80386 was Intel’s processor.
first practical 32-bit microprocessor that contained a - The Pentium 4 microprocessor was first made
32-bit data bus and a 32-bit memory address. available in late 2000.
- The 80386EX microprocessor is called an - The most recent version of the Pentium is called
embedded PC because it contains all the components the Core2 by Intel.
of the AT class personal computer on a single - The main difference is that the Pentium 4 is
integrated circuit. available in speeds to 3.2 GHz and faster and the chip
- Applications that require higher microprocessor sets that support the Pentium 4 use the RAMBUS or
speeds and large memory systems include software DDR memory technologies in place of once standard
systems that use a GUI, or graphical user interface. SDRAM technology
- 3 We often call a GUI a WYSIWYG (what you see
is what you get) display.
- In 1989, Intel released the 80486 microprocessor,
which incorporated an 80386-like microprocessor, an
80387-like numeric coprocessor, and an 8K-byte
cache memory system into one integrated package.

- Intel has included new modifications to the

Pentium 4 and Core2 that include a 64-bit core and
multiple cores.
- Each core executes a separate task in a program,
which increases the speed of execution if a program
is written to take advantage of the multiple cores.
Programs that do this are called multithreaded
applications
- The hyper-threading technology should continue
into the future, bringing even more parallel processors
(at present two processors). There are suggestions
that Intel may also incorporate the chip set into the
microprocessor package.

- The Pentium, introduced in 1993, was similar to the

80386 and 80486 microprocessors.
- Pentium operated with a clocking frequency of 60
MHz and 66 MHz, and a speed of 110 MIPs, with a
higher-frequency 100 MHz one and one-half clocked
version that operated at 150 MIPs.
THE MICROPROCESSOR-BASED PERSONAL - Drivers are programs that control installable I/O
COMPUTER SYSTEM devices such as a mouse, disk cache, hand scanner,
- This section shows the structure of the CD-ROM memory (Compact Disk Read-Only
microprocessor-based personal computer system. Memory), DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), or installable
This structure includes information about the memory devices, as well as programs.
and operating system used in many microprocessor- - The COMMAND.COM program (command
based computer systems. processor) controls the operation of the computer
- See Figure 1–6 for the block diagram of the from the keyboard when operated in the DOS mode.
personal computer. This diagram also applies to any
computer system, from the early mainframe
computers to the latest microprocessor-based
systems. The block diagram is composed of
three blocks that are interconnected by buses.

• The Memory and I/O Systems

- The memory system is divided into three
main parts:
➢ TPA (transient program area) - The system area contains programs on either a
➢System Area, and read-only memory (ROM) or flash memory, and areas
➢ XMS (extended memory system). of read/write (RAM) memory for data storage.

- A change beginning with the introduction of the

Pentium microprocessor and the ATX class machine
is the addition of a bus called the PCI (peripheral
component interconnect) bus
- The universal serial bus is intended to connect
peripheral devices such as keyboards, a mouse,
modems, and sound cards to the microprocessor
through a serial data path and a twisted pair of wires.
- The Windows TPA is the first 2G bytes of the
- The AGP (advanced graphics port) for video cards.
memory system from locations 00000000H to
The advanced graphics port transfers data between
7FFFFFFFH. The Windows system area is the last 2G
the video card and the microprocessor at higher
bytes of memory from locations 80000000H to
speeds (66 MHz, with a 64-bit data path, or 533M
FFFFFFFFH.
bytes per second) than were possible through any
- The difference between windows and the DOS
other bus or connection.
memory map are the sizes and locations of these
- The serial ATA interface (SATA) for hard disk
areas.
drives and the PCI Express bus for the video card.
- Windows located in the system area is the actual
- The transient program area (TPA) holds the DOS
Windows program and drivers.
(disk operating system) operating system and other
programs that control the computer system.
 • The Bus
- A bus is a common group of wires that interconnect
components in a computer system

- The address bus requests a memory location from

the memory or an I/O location from the I/O devices
- The data bus transfers information between the
microprocessor and its memory and I/O address
- The I/O (input/output) space in a computer system
space.
extends from I/O port 0000H to port FFFFH.
- The control bus contains lines that select the
- An I/O port address is similar to a memory address,
memory or I/O and cause them to perform a read or
except that instead of addressing memory, it
write operation.
addresses an I/O device.
- The I/O devices allow the microprocessor to ➢ (memory read control), (memory
communicate between itself and the outside world. write control), (I/O read control), and (I/O
write control).
• The Microprocessor
- The CPU (central processing unit), is the
controlling element in a computer system.
- The microprocessor performs three main tasks for
the computer system:
(1) data transfer between itself and the
memory or I/O systems,
(2) simple arithmetic and logic operations, and
(3) program flow via simple decisions.
Although these are simple tasks, it is through
them that the microprocessor performs
virtually any series of operations or tasks.
- The power of the microprocessor is in its
The Microprocessor
capability to execute billions of millions of instructions
COMPUTER DATA FORMATS
per second from a program or software (group of
- ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
instructions) stored in the memory system.
Interchange) data represent alphanumeric characters
- feature that makes the microprocessor powerful is
in the memory of a computer system.
its ability to make simple decisions based upon
- Unicode system to store alphanumeric data. used
numerical facts
to store all special characters from many worldwide
character sets. This allows software written for the
Windows environment to be used in many countries
around the world.
- Binary-coded decimal (BCD) information is stored
in either packed or unpacked forms. Packed BCD
data are stored as two digits per byte and unpacked
BCD data are stored as one digit per byte.
- Byte-sized data are stored as unsigned and signed
integers
- A word (16-bits) is formed with two bytes of data.
- Doubleword-sized data requires four bytes of
memory because it is a 32-bit number. Doubleword
data appear as a product after a multiplication and
also as a dividend before a division.
- A real number, or a floating-point number, as it is
often called, contains two parts: a mantissa,
significand, or fraction; and an exponent.