Article
Article
- Computing & Information Technology
- Computing - general
- Computer architecture
Computer architecture
Article By:
Abzug, Charles Department of Computer Science James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Last reviewed:August 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.154030
Show previous versions
- Computer architecture, published June 2014:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Computer organization and implementation
- Major issues
- Instruction-set architecture
- Registers
- Native data types
- Word size
- Memory addressing scheme
- Maximum size of memory
- Number of buses and their relationship
- Datapath width
- CISC versus RISC
- Pipelining
- Other techniques for increasing the processing speed
- Multiprocessor core
- Compiler as adjunct to processor
- Economics
- Historically significant computer architects
- Related Primary Literature
- Additional Reading
The practice of designing computer systems. Just as the architecture of a building describes its overall structural concept and principal features, the architecture of a computer system consists of a description of the overall layout and major features of a computer system. In both cases, we are concerned with how the object, whose architecture we are describing, appears to the user. In computer architecture, the user is not the final user of the system, but the person who writes computer programs to be run on the system (see illustration).
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