Introduction

Dependability, Reliability, and Availability

Dependability is the quality of delivered service such that reliance can justifiably be placed on this service.

Reliability is a measure of the continuous service accomplishment(or, equivalently, of the time to failure) from a reference point.

mean time to failure(MTTF) is a reliability measure. annual failure rate(AFR) is the percentage of devices that would be expected to fail in a year for a given MTTF. Service interruption is measured as mean time to repair(MTTR). Mean time between failures(MTBF) is simply the sum of MTTF and MTTR.

Availability is a measure of service accomplishment with respect to the alternation between the two states of accomplishment and interruption.

Availability = MTTF / MTBF

3 ways to improve MTTF:

1. Fault avoidance: preventing fault occurrence by construction.
2. Fault tolerance: using redundancy to allow the service to comply with the service specification despite faults occurring, which applies primarily to hardware faults.
3. Fault forecasting: predicting the presence and creation of faults, which applies to hardware and software faults, allowing the component to be replaced before it fails.

Introduction

Principle of locality

• Temporal locality : If a data location is referenced then it will tend to be referenced again soon.
• spatial locality : If a data location is referenced, data locations with nearby addresses will tend to be referenced soon.

Memory hierarchy

A structrue that uses multiple levels of memories; as the distance from the processor increases, the size of the memories and the access time both increase.

The main memory is implemented from DRAM, levels closer to the processor use SRAM, the largest and slowest level is usually magnetic disk.

Introduction

A abstract view of the implementation of the MIPS subset showing the major functional units and the major connections between them:

The basic implementation of the MIPS subset, including the necessary multiplexors and control lines:

asserted

The signal is logically high or true.

deasserted

The signal is logically low or false.

Clocking methodology

The approach used to determine when data is valid and stable relative to the clock.

Edge-triggered clocking

A clocking scheme in which all state changes occur on a clock edge.

control signal

A signal used for multiplexor selection or for directing the operation of a functional unit; contrasts with a data signal , which contains information that is operated on by a funcional unit.

The state element is changed only when the write control signal is asserted and a clock edge occurs.

Addition and Subtraction

1. Add (add), and immediate (addi), and subtract (sub) cause exceptions on overflow. MIPS detects overflow with an exception (or interrupt ), which is an unscheduled procedure call. The address of current instruction is saved and the computer jumps to predefined address to invoke the appropriate routine for that exception.

   MIPS uses exception program counter (EPC) to contain the address of the instruction that causes the exception. The instruction move from system control (mfc0) is used to copy EPC into a general-purpose register.

2. Add unsigned (addu), add immediate unsigned (addiu), and subtract unsigned (subu) do not cause exceptions on overflow. Programmers can trap overflow anyway: when overflow occurs, the sign bit of the result is not properly set. Compairing with sign bits of operands, the sign bit of the result can be determined.

SIMD (single instruction, multiple data): By partitioning the carry chains within a 64-bit adder, a processor could perform simultaneous operations on a short vecters of eight 8-bit operands, four 16-bit operands, etc. Vectors and 8-bit data often appears in multimedia routine.

Common goal of computer designers: to find a language that makes it easy to build the hardware and the compiler while maximizing performance and minimizing cost and power.

Stored-program concept

The idea that instructions and data of many types can be stored in memory as numbers, leading to the stored-program computer.

Concepts

Moore’s law

Over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.

Compiler

A program that translates high-level language statements into assembly language statements.

Assembler

A program that translates a symbolic version of instructions into the binary version.

High-level programming langrage

A portable language that is composed of words and algebraic notation that can be translated by a compiler into assembly language.

Assembly language

Asymbolic representation of machine instructions.

Machine language

A binary representation of machine instructions.

5 components of a computer

Input, Output, Memory, Control, Datapath

The last two sometimes combined and called the processor.

Instruction set architecture One key interface between the levels of abstraction is the instruction set architecture-the interface between the hardware and low-level software.

History of Unix and Linux

MULTICS & UNICS

• Researchers at M.I.T. joined forces with Bell Labs and Generic Electric and began designing a second-generation system, MULTICS(Multiplexed Information and Computing Service)
• One of the Bell Labs researchers, Ken Thompson wrote a stripped-down MULTICS on a PDP-7 minicomputer. The system is called UNICS(UNiplexed Information and Computing Service) jokingly by Brian Kernighan, Bell Labs.
• Thompson tied to rewite UNIX with B language of his own design and failed. Ritchie then designed a successor to B, called C. Working together, they rewrote UNIX in C.
• Steve Johnson of Bell Labs designed and implemented the portable C compiler, which could be retargeted to produce code for any resonable machine with a only a moderate amount of effort.

Standard UNIX

• AT&T released its first commercial UNIX: System III, then System V.
• Aided by U.S. Dept. of Defense, Berkeley released an improved PDP-11 called 1BSD(First Berkeley Software Distribution), which supported virtual memory, TCP/IP, vi, csh, etc.
• IEEE came up with POSIX(Portable Operating System of UNIXish), witch reconcile the two flavors of UNIX.