Chapter 1: A Tour of Computer Systems

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A Tour of Computer Systems

1.1 Information Is Bits + Context

Aside Origins of the C programming language

1.2 Programs Are Translated by Other Programs into Different Forms

Aside The GNU project

1.3 It Pays to Understand How Compilation Systems Work

1.4 Processors Read and Interpret Instructions Stored in Memory

1.4.1 Hardware Organization of a System

Buses

I/O Devices

Main Memory

Processor

1.4.2 Running the hello Program

1.5 Caches Matter

1.6 Storage Devices Form a Hierarchy

1.7 The Operating System Manages the Hardware

1.7.1 Processes

Aside Unix, Posix, and the Standard Unix Specification

1.7.2 Threads

1.7.3 Virtual Memory

1.7.4 Files

1.8 Systems Communicate with Other Systems Using Networks

Aside The Linux project

1.9 Important Themes

1.9.1 Amdahl’s Law

Practice Problem 1.1 (solution page 64)

Aside Expressing relative performance

Practice Problem 1.2 (solution page 64)

1.9.2 Concurrency and Parallelism

Thread-Level Concurrency

Instruction-Level Parallelism

Single-Instruction, Multiple-Data (SIMD) Parallelism

1.9.3 The Importance of Abstractions in Computer Systems

1.10 Summary

Bibliographic Notes

Solutions to Practice Problems

Solution to Problem 1.1 (page 58)

Solution to Problem 1.2 (page 59)

Part I

Program Structure and Execution

Source footnotes