Input and Output of a Processor Presented By

Input and Output of a Processor Presented By Chandra Shekar Reddy. Y 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 1

Introduction q. I/O systems generally place greater emphasis on dependability & cost. q. I/O systems must also plan for expandability and diversity of devices. q. Performance plays a small role for I/O systems. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 2

Diversity of I/O systems Three characteristics are useful in organizing the wide variety of I/O systems. Ø Behavior : Input (read once), Output (write only) or storage Ø Partner : Either Human or a machine at the end of the I/O device. Ø Data rate : The peak rate at which the data can be transferred between the i/o devices and main memeory or processor. Ex : A key board, i/p device used by a human with data rate about 10 bytes per second. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 3

A typical collection of I/O devices 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 4

Typical I/O devices 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 5

Interfacing I/O devices to processor memory and operating systems Giving Commands to i/o devices Basically two techniques are used to address the devices. 1. Memory-mapped I/O : An i/o scheme in which portions of address space are assigned to i/o devices. Ex : Simple printer has 2 i/o device registers. a. Status register : It contains done bit and error bit. b. Data register : The data to be printed is put into this register. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 6

2. Alternative method is to use dedicated i/o instructions in the processor. Ø These specify both the device no. and command word. Ø The processor communicates via a set of wires normally included as a part of i/o bus. Ø Commands can be transmitted over data lines in the bus. Ex : Intel IA 32, IBM 370. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 7

Communicating with the processor. q Polling : The process of periodically checking the status of the i/o devices to determine the need to service the devices. Disadvantage : Waste of processor time. q Interrupt Driven i/o Systems : It employs i/o interrupts to indicate the processor that an i/o device needs attention. A system can use either vector interrupts or an exception cause register. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 8

The status register determines who can interrupt the computer. A more refined blocking of interrupts is available in the interrupt mask field. There is a bit in the mask corresponding each bit in the pending interrupt field of cause register. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 9

Transferring the data between a device and memory q. Polling and i/o interrupts are the basic methods for implementing data transfer. q. Direct Memory Access : A mechanism that provides a driver controller the ability to transfer the data directly to or from memory with out involving the processor. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 10

Conclusion q. I/O systems are evaluated on several different characteristics : Dependability , variety of i/o devices supported , cost. q. These goals lead to widely varying schemes for interfacing i/o devices. 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 11

References Computer Organization & Design – David Patterson John L. Hennessy. http: //www. pcguide. com http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki http: //www. amigau. com/aig 11/5/2008 Computer Architecture & Design 12