http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ 2026-05-29T20:21:09+03:00 http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/lib/tpl/arctic/images/favicon.ico text/html 2023-07-16T18:05:05+03:00 http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ass/cursuri/01/theory/00?rev=1689519905&do=diff Processors, Chips and Systems A CPU is an integrated circuit made of billions (some are even close to trillions!) of miniature transistors (plus other types of electronic components such as capacitors, resistors and inductors) closely packed into a substrate using Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technologies. Actually, this is the definition of an Integrated Circuit (IC), a class of devices where the processor belongs to! There are many other types of ICs such as amplifiers, voltage regulat… text/html 2023-07-16T19:11:46+03:00 http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ass/cursuri/01/theory/01?rev=1689523906&do=diff The ARM Family At the time of its inception (1983), ARM stood for “Acorn RISC Machine”, referencing the Cambridge, England based company, Acorn Computers. Their Acorn Archimedes was one of the first personal computers (PC) to use a RISC processor. Later in 1990, ARM Ltd. was founded as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, VLSI Technology and Apple. The meaning of the acronym ARM changed to “Advanced RISC Machines” at Apple's request, them not wanting to advertise any ties with their former … text/html 2023-07-17T22:39:06+03:00 http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ass/cursuri/01/theory/02?rev=1689622746&do=diff Processor protection domains In this section, we try to summarize some of the traditional reponsibilities of a CPU. If you are already acquainted with them (or some), feel free to skim past them! x86 protection modes Primarily developing for x86, you may be familiar with its protection rings, or at least with two of them: the ones traditionally used for the separation between user-space and kernel-space. When the x86' architecture was first introduced in the late '70s, the designers expected … text/html 2023-07-16T22:31:07+03:00 http://ocw.cs.pub.ro/courses/ass/cursuri/01/theory/03?rev=1689535867&do=diff The boot process Remember the simplicity of x86's boot process? When you turned on the computer, the BIOS would initialize all required components and peripherals (RAM, keyboard and disks). After that, it would iterate through all persistent storage devices (in a configurable order) and pick the first one where a bootloader is detected to be installed in the first 512 bytes sector and continue with the execution from there! The bootloader would, optionally, present a menu to the user to choose …