What the Cover Page Says

            The following post will be based on Nik’s opinion only. Sentences quoted were copy-pasted from certain sites and sources were given after.

          For the laboratory activity, our professor told us to make a blog post about the cover page of the book “Structure Computer Organization” written by Andrew Tanenbaum. The following will be my personal interpretation of such cover..LOL.

o    Media Processor –is defined as “a microprocessor-based system-on-a-chip which is designed to deal with digital streaming data in real-time rates.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_processor) It is presented as a base of the building because it is the one who

o    Pipeline – is the “technique that allows multiple instructions to be executed simultaneously.” (source: Computer Architecture and Assembly Language by Anthony J. Dos Reis) Pipelining is the technique and it is represented as such because it performs the instructions by a sequence of stages.

o    Digital Logic Level

o    1Hz Clock – this image represents the clock frequency of the computer.

o    Flip flop - flip flop is defined as "a circuit that can switch between two states" (source: Computer Architecture and Assembly Language by Anthony J. Dos Reis). And it is represented as a man jumping on a trampoline because the state of position of that man too is changing from up to down.

o    Dynamic RAM and Static RAM –

o    Microarchitecture level

o    Adder – is a defined as “a digital circuit that performs addition of numbers”. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_(electronics) ). And such image was used to represent because it shows the function of this component.

o    Interpreter – is defined as “a program that executes a program at the source level” (source: Computer Architecture and Assembly Language by Anthony J. Dos Reis). The image show that  the woman there is the interpreter who is interpreting the language/words of the Indian man which represents the program code for the computer (the man in a suit) to understand the source code made.

o    ISA level

o    Embedded Computer – this is defined as “a specialized computer system that is part of a larger system or a machine.” (source; http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/embedded_system.html ). The bed represents the machine (microwaves, cars, etc) while the computer represents the system with instructions given on which the machine will follow.

o    Mouse and Trap – this will be similar to mousetrapping which is defined as a “technique used by some websites to keep visitors from leaving their site.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousetrapping). The image gives us a mouse with cheese used as a trap. If that mouse (user) will get that cheese (site) then surely it will be unable to leave since it will be trapped.

o    Operating system level

o    Race – it is defined as “the behavior of an electronic or software system where the output is dependent on the sequence or timing of other uncontrollable events…The term originates with the idea of two signals racing each other to influence the output first” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition) The image shows two athletes on  a race which represents the signals while the finishing line would then be the output of that race.

o    Operating System – “is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs”. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system). On the image, the doctor represents the OS while the patient there is representing the hardware and software of the computer on which the doctor is managing of.

o    Assembly language level

o    Low-level language and High-level language – low-level programming language is defined as “a programming language that provides a little or no abstraction from a computer’s instruction set architecture”. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_programming_language). It is represented with a baby it is because low-level language is still difficult to understand because of its abstractness. While the high-level language is defined as “a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_programming_language). It is represented by an already grown-up man because we can already understand what it is saying.

o    Assembler and Loader – assembler is “a computer program which translates from assembly language to an object file or machine language format” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembler). The image shows a man filing the files which works exactly as what the assembler does. The loader is “the part of an OS that is responsible for loading programs” (source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loader_(computing). And the image shows a man  loading those boxes which represents the programs.

o    Branch prediction – it is the “process of predicting the next instruction to be executed after a conditional branch instruction to minimize the occurrence of a pipeline stall” (source: Computer Architecture and Assembly Language by Anthony J. Dos Reis)

o    PCI express – is a “high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards”. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express). And it is represented with a full-speed bike because of how it works.

o    Cache – is defined as a “high-speed memory that holds a subset of the contents of main memory” (source: Computer Architecture and Assembly Language by Anthony J. Dos Reis). The dog here represents the high-speed memory with the bones as the contents of that memory.