Computer Architecture [Review]

In engineering, there's a saying: "You can have it fast, cheap, or good—pick two." As you all know, this means that achieving goals in one area often requires trade-offs and compromises in another.

For instance, prioritizing performance might lead to increased energy consumption. Opting for a complex chip design could drive up costs. The real challenge is determining the best design choices to implement these trade-offs effectively within a given domain.

In this lesson, we will conduct a quick review of computer architecture, introducing fundamental concepts. We'll concentrate on areas that significantly impact numeric systems, specifically VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) and ILP (Instruction Level Parallelism), pipelines, branches, and control dependencies.

However, embedded systems have distinct characteristics. The three primary goals of embedded systems are low power consumption, high performance, and low cost. As you refresh your knowledge of computer architecture, keep in mind how these unique design features may be influenced.