Page 46 - 4130

LESSON 8
ARCHITECTURE OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS

PART 1

Task 1. Learn the following words and word combinations:
Inevitably, virtually, root in, spell out the requirements, claim, put on
emphasis, index registers, floating point data representation, indirect
addressing, hardware interrupts, CPU execution, substantially,
evolve.

Task 2. Make up your own sentences using words and phrases
from the previous exercise.

TEXT 1
ORIGIN OF THE NOTION
Any discussion of computer architectures, of how computers
and computer systems are organized, designed, and implemented,
inevitably makes reference to the "von Neumann architecture" as a
basis for comparison. And of course this is so, since virtually every
electronic computer ever built has been rooted in this architecture.
The name applied to it comes from John von Neumann, who was the
first to spell out the requirements for a general purpose electronic
computer.
Von Neumann's design led eventually to the construction of the
EDVAC computer in 1952. However, the first computer of this type
to be actually constructed and operated was the Manchester Mark I,
designed and built at Manchester University in England. It ran its
first program in 1948, executing it out of its 96 word memory. It
executed an instruction in 1.2 milliseconds, which must have seemed
phenomenal at the time. Using today's popular "MIPS" terminology
(millions of instructions per second), it would be rated at .00083

44