xsharp.eu

It is some time since anything has been posted here and I thought some may be interested in this topic.
I have attached it as a pdf. It is for interest only.
To what extent I've succeeded in making things easy for others to understand I cannot know at this stage.

I'd be very grateful for feedback. Particularly for errors in what I've said. Lack of clarity etc. etc.
Terry

Hello Terry,

I wonder if you have written textbooks for a living?

I can imagine that for most programmers your 12 page paper is probably set too high even though you clearly tried to keep it 'light' by comparing the computer to hotel business. For me it looked a bit like a well thought out summary of one my university books for one of the subjects I followed: Structured Computer Organization by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

PS: I wouldn't be able to tell if any of the theory is wrong. So my only comment, sorry for that, is a small typing error on page 7, where it says 'Insruction Stack' above the picture.

Dick

Hi Dick

Many thanks for taking time to read and giving your comments.

No I have not written textbooks for a living, but I do find writing things down helps concolidate understanding.

Perhaps trying to condense understanding down to 12 pages was too ambitious, but going too far in this regard soon escalates out of manageable size..

The fact my summary reminded you of one of your university books, I find encouraging.

I had not been aware of Structured Computer Organization by Andrew S. Tanenbaum before, but note his book was published in 1998 and ran to 669 pages - meaning it would have taken a long time to read and assimilate.

Terry

I would say that we should forget everything about electronic details and what we think what could happen inside a computer.

Instead we should think on using devices where we talk to in and where we get answers after a certain amount of time. These devices can be desktop computers, mobile phones, big clusters of servers on the other side of the world or even swarms of millions of devices.

Important is how to describe flow of information - in a logical way and also dynamically if performance matters.

(I have come from the electronic side to computers, so I have learned much that I can only use in case that such a device doesn't want to start up and I don't want to throw it away)
Arne