Topic 2 of 6 · Form 5
Hardware, processor fundamentals and assembly language
Input, output and storage devices; RAM (SRAM vs DRAM) and ROM (PROM, EPROM, EEPROM); embedded systems; buffers; logic gates and circuits (NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR), truth tables and logic expressions.
Notes for this topic 1 file, in order
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Hardware
Input, output and storage devices; RAM (SRAM vs DRAM) and ROM (PROM, EPROM, EEPROM); embedded systems; buffers; logic gates and circuits (NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR), truth tables and logic expressions.
Processor fundamentals
Von Neumann model; registers (PC, MAR, MDR, ACC, IX, CIR, status register); ALU, CU, system clock, immediate access store; buses (address, data, control); performance factors (clock speed, cores, bus width, cache); ports (USB, HDMI); the fetch–execute cycle in register transfer notation; interrupts and the interrupt service routine.
Assembly language
Relationship with machine code; two-pass assembler; addressing modes (immediate, direct, indirect, indexed, relative); instruction groups (data movement, I/O, arithmetic, jumps, compare); tracing assembly programs.
Bit manipulation
Binary shifts (logical, arithmetic, cyclic) and masking with AND, OR, XOR to test or set bits.
Worked example: Use a mask to test whether bit 3 (value 8) of 10101100 is set.
10101100 AND 00001000 = 00001000 → non-zero, so bit 3 is set
Check yourself
- Which register holds the address of the next instruction?
- Give one difference between SRAM and DRAM.
- What does indexed addressing do?
Show answers
- The program counter.
- SRAM is faster and does not need refreshing; DRAM is cheaper, denser and must be refreshed.
- Adds the contents of the index register to the given address to form the effective address.
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