System Architecture
Explore how operating systems manage system architecture to optimize interaction with I O devices. Understand the hierarchical bus structures connecting the CPU, memory, and peripherals to enhance overall system performance within modern computing environments.
We'll cover the following...
Prototypical system architecture
To begin our discussion, let’s look at a “classical” diagram of a typical system, given below.
The picture shows a single CPU attached to the main memory of the system via some kind of memory bus or interconnect. Some devices are connected to the system via a general I/O bus, which in many modern systems would be PCI (or one of its many derivatives); graphics and some other higher-performance I/O devices might be found here. Finally, even lower down are one or more of what we call a peripheral bus, such as SCSI, SATA, or USB. These connect slow devices to the system, ...