Lecture 04: Memory and Binary Systems

ITSC 3181 Introduction to Computer Architecture

https://passlab.github.io/ITSC3181/

Department of Computer Science

Yonghong Yan
yyan7@uncc.edu
https://passlab.github.io/yanyh/

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 Lectures for Chapter 1 and C Basics
Computer Abstractions and Technology
• Lecture 01: Chapter 1
– 1.1 – 1.4: Introduction, great ideas, Moore’s law, abstraction,
computer components, and program execution

• Lecture 02 - 03: C Basics; Compilation, Assembly, Linking

and Program Execution
• Lecture 03 - 04: Chapter 1
– 1.6 – 1.7: Performance, power and technology trends
☛• Lecture 04 - 05: Memory and Binary Systems
• Lecture 05:
– 1.8 - 1.9: Multiprocessing and benchmarking

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 Main Memory (DRAM) of a Computer
CPU or Processor
Control Unit
ALU
Input
Main Memory I/OOutput
Processor CPU is also called a chip.
IR PC

MBR MAR

Data Bus

Control Bus

Address Bus

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 Everything is Data Stored in Files
• Source code, executable, object are all files
– Files: Hello.c, sum_full.c, sum
– Folder: ., .., /home/yanyh, etc
• Compiler, OS kernel, etc are all stored as files
– gcc, vmlinuz-4.4.0-104-generic
• Information about files/folders and data are also files
– Metadata

• Files need to be loaded to memory in order to be

processed
– ./hello: load the file hello and execute it
– ls: load the file ls, which is the command ls, and execute it. The ls
command lists the files in the specified folder.
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 Loading a file for a command to Memory
• To load a file from disk into memory

• Loading: To execute a file, e.g.

–
• ./ is to specify the path of sum file
– To execute any linux command, e.g. “ls, cd”, etc.
– Right-click an app icon to execute the app
• The runtime instance of an executable is called a “process”
– It occupies memory,
– It uses resources (files, sockets, driver, etc).
– It executes its threads (machine instructions).
– See the processes of the system using “ps” command, Windows
“task manager”, and Mac OS X “Activity Monitor”
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 Memory and States

• A memory device is a gadget that helps you record information

and recall the information at some later time.
• The minimum unit of memory is like an electrical switch

• The electrical switch can be in one of these 2 states:

• off (we will call this state 0)
• on (we will call this state 1)

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 Memory Cells Used In A Computer

• One switch can be in one of 2 states

• A row of n switches:

can be in one of 2n states !

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 Memory Cells Used In A Computer (cont.)
• Example: row of 3 switches

• A row of 3 switches can be in one of 23 = 8 states.

• The 8 possible states are given in the figure above.

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 Representing Numbers Using a Row of Switches

• We can represent each number using a different state of the

switches.

Example:

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 The Binary Number System
• The binary number system uses 2 digits to encode a number:
• 0 = represents no value
• 1 = represents a unit value

• That means that you can only use the digits 0 and 1 to write a binary
number
•0
– Example: some binary numbers •1
• 10
• 11
• 1010
• and so on.

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 The Binary Number System

• The different states of these 3 switches represent the numbers 0-7

using the binary number system:

0
1

000 100
001 101
010 110
100 111

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 The Binary Number System

• The value that is encoded (represented) by a binary number is

computed as follows:

Binary number Value encoded by the binary number

dn-1 dn-2 ... d1 d0 dn-1×2n-1 + dn-2×2n-2 + ... + d1×21 + d0×20

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 The Binary Number System

Example:

Binary number Value encoded by the binary number

0
0 0×2 = 0
0
1 1×2 = 1
1 0
10 1×2 + 0 ×2 = 2
1 0
11 1×2 + 1 ×2 = 3
3 2 1 0
1010 1×2 + 0×2 + 1×2 + 0×2 = 8 + 2 = 10

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 Memory and Binary Number in a Computer

• Computer memory consists of multiple memory cells and each

cells stores a number

• The computer system uses the binary number encoding to store

the number

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Memory and Binary Number in a Computer (cont.)

• Note: the address is also expressed as a binary number

A computer can have over 4,000,000,000 bytes (4
Gigabytes) of memory.

So we need a 32 bites to express the address

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 Combining Adjacent Memory Cells

• A byte has 8 bits and therefore, it can store:

• 00000000 = 0
– 28 = 256 different patterns
• 00000001 = 1
• 00000010 = 2
• 00000011 = 3
• ...
• 11111111 = 255
• Therefore, one byte can store one of 256 possible values
• You can store the number 34 into a byte,
• But you cannot store the number 456, the value is out of
range)
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 Combining Adjacent Memory Cells (cont.)

• The computer can combine adjacent bytes (memory cells) and use
it as a larger memory cell
Schematically:

A 16 bits memory cell can store one of 216 = 65536 different

patterns.
Therefore, it can represent (larger) numbers ranging from: 0 −
65535.
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 Combining Adjacent Memory Cells (cont.)

• Example: how a computer can use 2 consecutive bytes as a 16 bits

memory cell:

• The bytes at address 0 and address 1 can be interpreted as a 16

bits memory cell (with address 0)

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 Combining Adjacent Memory Cells (cont.)

• When the computer accesses the memory, it specifies:

– The memory location (address)
– The number of bytes it needs
– E.g. read from 000…000 for two bytes: It reads 3331 (decimal
number)

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 Combining Adjacent Memory Cells (cont.)

• Combine 4 consecutive bytes and use them as a 32 bits memory

cell
– To represent numbers ranging from: 0 − (232-1) or 0 − 4294967295

• combine 8 consecutive bytes and use them as a 64 bits memory

cell
• To represent numbers ranging from: 0 − (264-1) or 0 −
18446744073709551615

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 Data Store in Memory

• What information is stored in the RAM memory

(what is the number represents) depends on:

– The type of data (this is the context information)

– Example of types: marital status, gender, age, salary,
and so on.
– This determines the encoding scheme used to interpret
the number

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 Variables are Memory Locations

int is a 4-byte data type.

• Variable (x) is symbolic representation of a memory location

– = x: Right value, i.e. appears on the right side of =
• read/load the content from the memory location
– x =: Left value, i.e. appears on the left side of =
• Write a value to the memory location
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