Chapter 4

MARIE: An Introduction
to a Simple Computer
 Chapter 4 Objectives

• Learn the components common to every modern

computer system.
• Be able to explain how each component
contributes to program execution.
• Understand a simple architecture invented to
illuminate these basic concepts, and how it relates
to some real architectures.
• Know how the program assembly process works.

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 4.1 Introduction

• Chapter 1 presented a general overview of

computer systems.
• In Chapter 2, we discussed how data is stored and
manipulated by various computer system
components.
• Chapter 3 described the fundamental components
of digital circuits.
• Having this background, we can now understand
how computer components work, and how they fit
together to create useful computer systems.

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 4.1 Introduction

• The computer’s CPU fetches, decodes, and

executes program instructions.
• The two principal parts of the CPU are the datapath
and the control unit.
– The datapath consists of an arithmetic-logic unit and
storage units (registers) that are interconnected by a data
bus that is also connected to main memory.
– Various CPU components perform sequenced operations
according to signals provided by its control unit.

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 4.1 Introduction

• Registers hold data that can be readily accessed by

the CPU.
• They can be implemented using D flip-flops .
– A 32-bit register requires 32 D flip-flops.
• The arithmetic-logic unit (ALU) carries out logical and
arithmetic operations as directed by the control unit.
• The control unit determines which actions to carry out
according to the values in a program counter register
and a status register.

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 4.1 Introduction

• The CPU shares data with other system components

by way of a data bus.
– A bus is a set of wires that simultaneously convey a single
bit along each line.
• Two types of buses are commonly found in computer
systems: point-to-point, and multipoint buses.

This is a point-to-point
bus configuration:

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 4.1 Introduction

• Buses consist of data lines, control lines, and

address lines.
• While the data lines convey bits from one device to
another, control lines determine the direction of data
flow, and when each device can access the bus.
• Address lines determine the location of the source
or destination of the data.

The next slide shows a model bus configuration.

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4.1 Introduction

8
 4.1 Introduction

• A multipoint bus is shown below.

• Because a multipoint bus is a shared resource,
access to it is controlled through protocols, which
are built into the hardware.

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 4.1 Introduction

• In a master-slave configuration, where more than

one device can be the bus master, concurrent
bus master requests must be arbitrated.
• Four categories of bus arbitration are:
– Daisy chain: Permissions – Distributed using self-detection:
are passed from the highest- Devices decide which gets the bus
priority device to the among themselves.
lowest. – Distributed using collision-
– Centralized parallel: Each detection: Any device can try to
device is directly connected use the bus. If its data collides
to an arbitration circuit. with the data of another device,
it tries again.

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 4.1 Introduction

• Every computer contains at least one clock that

synchronizes the activities of its components.
• A fixed number of clock cycles are required to carry
out each data movement or computational operation .
• The clock frequency, measured in megahertz or
gigahertz, determines the speed with which all
operations are carried out.
• Clock cycle time is the reciprocal of clock frequency.
– An 800 MHz clock has a cycle time of 1.25 ns.

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 4.1 Introduction

• Clock speed should not be confused with CPU

performance.
• The CPU time required to run a program is given by
the general performance equation:

– We see that we can improve CPU throughput when we

reduce the number of instructions in a program, reduce the
number of cycles per instruction, or reduce the number of
nanoseconds per clock cycle.
We will return to this important equation in later chapters.
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 4.1 Introduction

• A computer communicates with the outside world

through its input/output (I/O) subsystem.
• I/O devices connect to the CPU through various
interfaces.
• I/O can be memory-mapped-- where the I/O device
behaves like main memory from the CPU’s point of
view.
• Or I/O can be instruction-based, where the CPU has
a specialized I/O instruction set.

We study I/O in detail in chapter 7.

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 4.1 Introduction

• Computer memory consists of a linear array of

addressable storage cells that are similar to registers.
• Memory can be byte-addressable, or word-
addressable, where a word typically consists of two or
more bytes.
• Memory is constructed of RAM chips, often referred to
in terms of length  width.
• If the memory word size of the machine is 16 bits,
then a 4M  16 RAM chip gives us 4 megabytes of
16-bit memory locations.

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 4.1 Introduction

• How does the computer access a memory location

corresponds to a particular address?
• We observe that 4M can be expressed as 2 2  2 20
= 2 22 words.
• The memory locations for this memory are
numbered 0 through 2 22 -1.
• Thus, the memory bus of this system requires at
least 22 address lines.
– The address lines “count” from 0 to 222 - 1 in binary. Each
line is either “on” or “off” indicating the location of the
desired memory element.
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 4.1 Introduction

• Physical memory usually consists of more than one

RAM chip.
• Access is more efficient when memory is organized
into banks of chips with the addresses interleaved
across the chips
• With low-order interleaving, the low order bits of the
address specify which memory bank contains the
address of interest.
• Accordingly, in high-order interleaving, the high order
address bits specify the memory bank.
The next slide illustrates these two ideas.
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4.1 Introduction

Low-Order Interleaving

High-Order Interleaving

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 4.1 Introduction

• The normal execution of a program is altered when

an event of higher-priority occurs. The CPU is
alerted to such an event through an interrupt.
• Interrupts can be triggered by I/O requests,
arithmetic errors (such as division by zero), or when
an invalid instruction is encountered.
• Each interrupt is associated with a procedure that
directs the actions of the CPU when an interrupt
occurs.
– Nonmaskable interrupts are high-priority interrupts that
cannot be ignored.

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 4.2 MARIE

• We can now bring together many of the ideas that

we have discussed to this point using a very simple
model computer.
• Our model computer, the Machine Architecture that
is Really Intuitive and Easy, MARIE, was designed
for the singular purpose of illustrating basic computer
system concepts.
• While this system is too simple to do anything useful
in the real world, a deep understanding of its
functions will enable you to comprehend system
architectures that are much more complex.
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 4.2 MARIE

The MARIE architecture has the following

characteristics:
• Binary, two's complement data representation.
• Stored program, fixed word length data and
instructions.
• 4K words of word-addressable main memory.
• 16-bit data words.
• 16-bit instructions, 4 for the opcode and 12 for the
address.
• A 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU).
• Seven registers for control and data movement.

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 4.2 MARIE

MARIE’s seven registers are:

• Accumulator, AC, a 16-bit register that holds a
conditional operator (e.g., "less than") or one operand
of a two-operand instruction.
• Memory address register, MAR, a 12-bit register that
holds the memory address of an instruction or the
operand of an instruction.
• Memory buffer register, MBR, a 16-bit register that
holds the data after its retrieval from, or before its
placement in memory.

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 4.2 MARIE

MARIE’s seven registers are:

• Program counter, PC, a 12-bit register that holds the
address of the next program instruction to be
executed.
• Instruction register, IR, which holds an instruction
immediately preceding its execution.
• Input register, InREG, an 8-bit register that holds data
read from an input device.
• Output register, OutREG, an 8-bit register, that holds
data that is ready for the output device.

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 4.2 MARIE

This is the MARIE architecture shown graphically.

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 4.2 MARIE

• The registers are interconnected, and connected

with main memory through a common data bus.
• Each device on the bus is identified by a unique
number that is set on the control lines whenever that
device is required to carry out an operation.
• Separate connections are also provided between the
accumulator and the memory buffer register, and the
ALU and the accumulator and memory buffer
register.
• This permits data transfer between these devices
without use of the main data bus.
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 4.2 MARIE

This is the MARIE data

path shown graphically.

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 4.2 MARIE

• A computer’s instruction set architecture (ISA)

specifies the format of its instructions and the
primitive operations that the machine can perform.
• The ISA is an interface between a computer’s
hardware and its software.
• Some ISAs include hundreds of different instructions
for processing data and controlling program
execution.
• The MARIE ISA consists of only thirteen instructions.

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 4.2 MARIE

• This is the format

of a MARIE instruction:

• The fundamental MARIE instructions are:

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 4.2 MARIE

• This is a bit pattern for a LOAD instruction as it would

appear in the IR:

• We see that the opcode is 1 and the address from

which to load the data is 3.

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 4.2 MARIE

• This is a bit pattern for a SKIPCOND instruction as it

would appear in the IR:

• We see that the opcode is 8 and bits 11 and 10 are

10, meaning that the next instruction will be skipped if
the value in the AC is greater than zero.
What is the hexadecimal representation of this instruction?
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 4.2 MARIE

• Each of our instructions actually consists of a

sequence of smaller instructions called
microoperations.
• The exact sequence of microoperations that are
carried out by an instruction can be specified using
register transfer language (RTL).
• In the MARIE RTL, we use the notation M[X] to
indicate the actual data value stored in memory
location X, and  to indicate the transfer of bytes to a
register or memory location.

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 4.2 MARIE

• The RTL for the LOAD instruction is:

MAR  X
MBR  M[MAR], AC  MBR

• Similarly, the RTL for the ADD instruction is:

MAR  X
MBR  M[MAR]
AC  AC + MBR

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 4.2 MARIE

• Recall that SKIPCOND skips the next instruction

according to the value of the AC.
• The RTL for the this instruction is the most complex
in our instruction set:
If IR[11 - 10] = 00 then
If AC < 0 then PC  PC + 1
else If IR[11 - 10] = 01 then
If AC = 0 then PC  PC + 1
else If IR[11 - 10] = 11 then
If AC > 0 then PC  PC + 1

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 4.3 Instruction Processing

• The fetch-decode-execute cycle is the series of steps

that a computer carries out when it runs a program.
• We first have to fetch an instruction from memory,
and place it into the IR.
• Once in the IR, it is decoded to determine what
needs to be done next.
• If a memory value (operand) is involved in the
operation, it is retrieved and placed into the MBR.
• With everything in place, the instruction is executed.
The next slide shows a flowchart of this process.

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4.3 Instruction Processing

34
 4.4 A Simple Program

• Consider the simple MARIE program given below.

We show a set of mnemonic instructions stored at
addresses 100 - 106 (hex):

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 4.4 A Simple Program

• Let’s look at what happens inside the computer when

our program runs.
• This is the LOAD 104 instruction:

36
 4.4 A Simple Program

• Our second instruction is ADD 105:

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4.5 A Discussion on Assemblers

• Mnemonic instructions, such as LOAD 104, are easy

for humans to write and understand.
• They are impossible for computers to understand.
• Assemblers translate instructions that are
comprehensible to humans into the machine
language that is comprehensible to computers
– We note the distinction between an assembler and a
compiler: In assembly language, there is a one-to-one
correspondence between a mnemonic instruction and its
machine code. With compilers, this is not usually the case.

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4.5 A Discussion on Assemblers

• Assemblers create an object program file from

mnemonic source code in two passes.
• During the first pass, the assembler assembles as
much of the program is it can, while it builds a
symbol table that contains memory references for
all symbols in the program.
• During the second pass, the instructions are
completed using the values from the symbol table.

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4.5 A Discussion on Assemblers

• Consider our example

program (top).
– Note that we have included two
directives HEX and DEC that
specify the radix of the constants.
• During the first pass, we
have a symbol table and the
partial instructions shown at
the bottom.

40
4.5 A Discussion on Assemblers

• After the second pass, the

assembly is complete.

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4.6 Extending Our Instruction Set

• So far, all of the MARIE instructions that we have

discussed use a direct addressing mode.
• This means that the address of the operand is
explicitly stated in the instruction.
• It is often useful to employ a indirect addressing,
where the address of the address of the operand is
given in the instruction.
– If you have ever used pointers in a program, you are
already familiar with indirect addressing.

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4.6 Extending Our Instruction Set

• To help you see what happens at the machine

level, we have included an indirect addressing
mode instruction to the MARIE instruction set.
• The ADDI instruction specifies the address of the
address of the operand. The following RTL tells us
what is happening at the register level:
MAR  X
MBR  M[MAR]
MAR  MBR
MBR  M[MAR]
AC  AC + MBR
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4.6 Extending Our Instruction Set

• Another helpful programming tool is the use of

subroutines.
• The jump-and-store instruction, JNS, gives us
limited subroutine functionality. The details of the
JNS instruction are given by the following RTL:
MBR  PC
MAR  X
Does JNS permit
M[MAR]  MBR recursive calls?
MBR  X
AC  1
AC  AC + MBR
PC  AC
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4.6 Extending Our Instruction Set

• Our last helpful instruction is the CLEAR instruction.

• All it does is set the contents of the accumulator to
all zeroes.
• This is the RTL for CLEAR:

AC  0

• We put our new instructions to work in the program

on the following slide.

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4.6 Extending Our Instruction Set
100 | LOAD Addr
101 | STORE Next 10E | STORE Ctr
102 | LOAD Num
10F | SKIPCOND
103 | SUBT One
000
104 | STORE Ctr 110 | JUMP Loop
105 | CLEAR 111 | HALT
106 |Loop LOAD Sum 112 |Addr HEX 118
107 | ADDI Next 113 |Next HEX 0
108 | STORE Sum 114 |Num DEC 5
115 |Sum DEC 0
109 | LOAD Next
116 |Ctr HEX 0
10A | ADD One 117 |One DEC 1
10B | STORE Next 118 | DEC 10
119 | DEC 15
10C | LOAD Ctr 11A | DEC 2
10D | SUBT One 11B | DEC 25
11C | DEC 30

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4.7 A Discussion on Decoding

• A computer’s control unit keeps things synchronized,

making sure that bits flow to the correct components
as the components are needed.
• There are two general ways in which a control unit
can be implemented: hardwired control and
microprogrammed control.
– With microprogrammed control, a small program is placed
into read-only memory in the microcontroller.
– Hardwired controllers implement this program using digital
logic components.

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 4.7 A Discussion on Decoding

• For example, a
hardwired control unit for
our simple system would
need a 4-to-14 decoder
to decode the opcode of
an instruction.
• The block diagram at the
right, shows a general
configuration for a
hardwired control unit.

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4.7 A Discussion on Decoding

• In microprogrammed control, the control store is kept in

ROM, PROM, or EPROM firmware, as shown below.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• MARIE shares many features with modern

architectures but it is not an accurate depiction of
them.
• In the following slides, we briefly examine two
machine architectures.
• We will look at an Intel architecture, which is a CISC
machine and MIPS, which is a RISC machine.
– CISC is an acronym for complex instruction set computer.
– RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer.

We delve into the “RISC versus CISC” argument in Chapter 9.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• MARIE shares many features with modern

architectures but it is not an accurate depiction of
them.
• In the following slides, we briefly examine two
machine architectures.
• We will look at an Intel architecture, which is a
CISC machine and MIPS, which is a RISC
machine.
– CISC is an acronym for complex instruction set computer.
– RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• The classic Intel architecture, the 8086, was born in

1979. It is a CISC architecture.
• It was adopted by IBM for its famed PC, which was
released in 1981.
• The 8086 operated on 16-bit data words and
supported 20-bit memory addresses.
• Later, to lower costs, the 8-bit 8088 was
introduced. Like the 8086, it used 20-bit memory
addresses.
What was the largest memory that the 8086 could address?

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• The 8086 had four 16-bit general-purpose registers

that could be accessed by the half-word.
• It also had a flags register, an instruction register,
and a stack accessed through the values in two
other registers, the base pointer and the stack
pointer.
• The 8086 had no built in floating-point processing.
• In 1980, Intel released the 8087 numeric
coprocessor, but few users elected to install them
because of their cost.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• In 1985, Intel introduced the 32-bit 80386.

• It also had no built-in floating-point unit.
• The 80486, introduced in 1989, was an 80386 that
had built-in floating-point processing and cache
memory.
• The 80386 and 80486 offered downward
compatibility with the 8086 and 8088.
• Software written for the smaller word systems was
directed to use the lower 16 bits of the 32-bit
registers.

54
 4.8 Real World Architectures

• Currently, Intel’s most advanced 32-bit

microprocessor is the Pentium 4.
• It can run as fast as 3.06 GHz. This clock rate is
over 350 times faster than that of the 8086.
• Speed enhancing features include multilevel cache
and instruction pipelining.
• Intel, along with many others, is marrying many of
the ideas of RISC architectures with
microprocessors that are largely CISC.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• The MIPS family of CPUs has been one of the most

successful in its class.
• In 1986 the first MIPS CPU was announced.
• It had a 32-bit word size and could address 4GB of
memory.
• Over the years, MIPS processors have been used in
general purpose computers as well as in games.
• The MIPS architecture now offers 32- and 64-bit
versions.

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 4.8 Real World Architectures

• MIPS was one of the first RISC microprocessors.

• The original MIPS architecture had only 55 different
instructions, as compared with the 8086 which had
over 100.
• MIPS was designed with performance in mind: It is a
load/store architecture, meaning that only the load
and store instructions can access memory.
• The large number of registers in the MIPS
architecture keeps bus traffic to a minimum.
How does this design affect performance?

57
 Chapter 4 Conclusion

• The major components of a computer system

are its control unit, registers, memory, ALU, and
data path.
• A built-in clock keeps everything synchronized.
• Control units can be microprogrammed or
hardwired.
• Hardwired control units give better performance,
while microprogrammed units are more
adaptable to changes.

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 Chapter 4 Conclusion

• Computers run programs through iterative fetch-

decode-execute cycles.
• Computers can run programs that are in
machine language.
• An assembler converts mnemonic code to
machine language.
• The Intel architecture is an example of a CISC
architecture; MIPS is an example of a RISC
architecture.

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End of Chapter 3

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