Introduction to Architecture

• wombat machine
• The purpose of these notes is to provide a quick understanding of how computers operate.
  • You will learn much more in Computer Architecture (CSCI 312)
• This discussion is based on a made-up computer called wombat.
  • Wombat is available here
  • Wombat documentation is available here.
• Architecture Overview
  • Wombat consists of the following components
    • The word size is 16 bits.
    • A program counter
    • An instruction register
    • A single general purpose register, the accumulator
    • A memory management uint
    • An ALU
    • A control unit.
    • Memory is word addressable.
  • The wombat architecture supports the following instruction set
    • 
    • The READ and WRITE instructions are completely artificial.
    • Everything else is somewhat realistic.
• A simple program
  • We would like to read in two integers and add them.
  • We will need to stick one of them in memory.
  • Then add.