Computers as Components, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER

3

CPUs

■ Input and output mechanisms.

■ Supervisor mode, exceptions, and traps.

■ Memory management and address translation.

■ Caches.

■ Performance and power consumption of CPUs.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes aspects of CPUs that do not directly relate to their instruction

sets. We consider a number of mechanisms that are important to interfacing to

other system elements,such as interrupts and memory management. We also take a

first look at aspects of the CPU other than functionality—performance and power

consumption are both very important attributes of programs that are only indirectly

related to the instructions they use.

In Section 3.1,