Computers as Components, 2nd Edition

Further Reading 147

SUMMARY

Numerous mechanisms must be used to implement complete computer systems.

For example,interrupts have little direct visibility in the instr uction set,but they are

very important to input and output operations. Similarly, memory management is

invisible to most of the program but is very important to creating a working system.

Although we are not directly concerned with the details of computer archi-

tecture, characteristics of the underlying CPU hardware have a major impact on

programs. When designing embedded systems, we are typically concerned about

characteristics such as execution speed or power consumption. Having some ...