References: CPE380 Introduction (Chapter 1)

The introductory slides I used in the lectures are the primary reference.

To familiarize everyone with the "guts" of a computer, I like to begin with a guided tour through the parts of a PC. There are lots of similar walk-throughs available on the WWW and elsewhere. I've also collected a few overview diagrams showing what's inside a modern PC and processor.

The book gives a reasonable introduction and defines a lot of terminology. We cover some of that terminology now, but we'll be covering more terminology throughtout this course as we start each new topic. The following links provide additional history and context references.

• Many technical and research papers, and historically significant documents, are available online from a wide range of organizations, including IEEE and ACM. For example, what became known as "Moore's Law" was really the predictions in Gordon E. Moore's article, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. You might not be able to get that paper for free without using a subscription -- and UK has many subscriptions you can directly access. Until July 17, 2023, that access was done by inserting .ezproxy.uky.edu at the end of the site address in the URL, and you'll find many online documents still referencing that, but it no longer works. Instead, access is now done using OpenAthens. To access a paper, append the URL of the document you want to:
  https://go.openathens.net/redirector/uky.edu?url=
  For example, if you would like to read the article PDF, you can use OpenAthens to access Moore's article as:
  https://go.openathens.net/redirector/uky.edu?url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4785860
• One of many interesting history sites is The Computer Museum History Center.
• Historic Computer Simulations is just what it sounds like; you can run programs on a simulated Zuse Z3, ENIAC, etc. Here's a Dr. Dobbs article overviewing the Z3.
• Blinkenlights has a cute little summary of the history of personal computing.
• Intel Museum: Decades of Innovation discusses Intel's role in the history of microprocessors. Note that Intel frequently re-arranges their site, so the link above breaks/changes fairly often. Here is reference that will get you more detailed information on Intel processors, although getting details takes a lot of clicks from there.
• Intel also has a variety of nice materials overviewing how chips are made -- but again frequently re-arranges their site. A PDF slide show with some excellent illustrations is: From Sand to Silicon "Making of a Chip" Illustrations. That's from 2011 so, hopefully, it will stay put... ;-)
• Tom's Hardware maintains a very impressive collection of info about processors; it began as "The Mother of All CPU Charts," summarizing 111 processors and their performance on 3330 benchmarks (30 for each processor). The ultimate table of processor specs also was there, listing clock rates, transistor complexities, die sizes, power, etc. Here is one version.