Keeping Technical Professionals Up-To-Date  

PC Hardware and Software Architecture Overview
 A 3-day Demo-Intensive Course

This course is aimed at engineers, technicians, technical management and others who need a comprehensive understanding of modern x86-based PCs. In addition to covering the latest hardware and software technologies it is an introduction to a wide range of computer concepts and components.

You will benefit from this workshop if you

• Need a quick yet thorough explanation of PC hardware and software fundamentals

• Need to understand the compatibility issues between different generations of PCs

• Configure, test, validate, upgrade, or troubleshoot PC hardware

• Install software/hardware upgrades and want to avoid conflicts

• Need to improve the speed, performance, or stability of your PCs

• About the major hardware components and subsystems in a PC

• How the components work, both individually and as a system

• How to configure each component

• How to get around limitations left behind by legacy technology

• The system software architecture

Attendees are expected to have an engineering/technical orientation. While not required, knowledge of microprocessor technology, memory, and standard peripherals is beneficial.

• Up to date information: PC technology changes fast and we continuously update our course materials to reflect these changes. The course you attend will be taught using materials updated and printed less than a week before the course, not from a textbook that was out-of-date the day it was printed.

• Live Demos: The instructor will use the classroom PC for demonstrations throughout the course and will also show and circulate state-of-the-art hardware, showing you what the components and sub-systems covered during the lecture actually look like.

• Straightforward explanations: Technical concepts and terms are explained in plain English. You will walk away with a thorough understanding of what key subsystem do, how they do it, and what support they need from each other to make a working  PC.

What is inside your PC?

• Computer architecture – CPU, ROM, RAM, Input/Output ports, the different buses

• Clocked logic

• The motherboard

• What the major hardware and software components do

x86 CPUs and chipsets

• Why we care about the different technologies

• Application, system and control registers

• Real, Protected, 64-bit, and System Management mode
  – The four different sub-modes

• Caches and cache architecture

• Pipelining concepts and implementations

• Multi-core processors

• Features of the latest desktop, laptop, and server x86 CPUs
  – Intel's Core™  and Xeon® families
  – AMD's Phenom™ II, Turion™, Opteron™

• The traditional bus-based chipset architecture
  – MCH, ICH, FWH, and Super I/O

• AMD’s, and Intel’s new system architecture
  – Integrated memory and graphics controllers
  – Superfast connections to I/O

• Key functions and interfaces of each chipset component

Memory technologies

• How memory is organized and how it works

• Memory timing and latency

• Interleaved paging

• Burst and pipelined memory

• Different kinds of memory: ROM, Flash, SRAM, DRAM, SDRAM, VRAM, GRAM, DDR-, DDR2-, & DDR3-SDRAM, Virtual memory…

• Memory modules: DIP, SIPP, SIMM, and DIMM

• The address and memory maps - How much of your installed memory is available to you operating system, and where does the rest go?

System software

• The PC - A layered architecture

• What happens between pressing the power button and your desktop being available?

• PC operating system boot sequences: Similarities and differences between DOS,
  Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux

• Motherboard ROM functions
  – Legacy BIOS, UEFI, and Tiano

• System setup - Motherboard configuration

• BIOS, memory resident programs, TSRs, and GUIs

• What is a driver and how does it work?

Buses and expansion slots

• The hidden ISA buses

• The different PCI, and PCI-Express slots

• Other connectors: eSATA, USB, and Firewire (IEEE1394)

• Plug-and-Play - How PCI and USB devices are discovered and configured

• How often is the bus the bottleneck?

• Avoiding potential problems when configuring video, sound, network, or SCSI adapters

• Shadowing expansion card ROMs

Configuring add-in cards

• What to do when Plug-and-Play fails

• System resources add-in card can claim

• Explaining the hardware and software interrupt concepts

• The three different ways a PC can handle a hardware interrupt

• Who uses I/O ports and for what?

• The I/O port map

• What is DMA (Direct Memory Access)?

• What types of devices use DMA?

• Different DMA implementations in PCs

Hard disks

• What to look out for when you install a new, or additional, hard disk

• How data is stored on a hard disk

• When a megabyte isn’t a megabyte, or "Why do I only have 965GB on my 1TB drive?"

• What is a head, a track, a cylinder, a sector, and the landing zone

• The different interfaces - Serial ATA (SATA), Parallel ATA (PATA or IDE), and SCSI

• Key features of each interface - Speed, flexibility, scalability, supported disk size...

• How file systems keep track of files

• FAT, NTFS, and other file system architectures

• Directory, partition, and cluster sizes

Video

• Resolutions and system requirements

• Graphical processors (GPUs)

• How much memory is graphics stealing from your applications?

• WRAM, VRAM, xGRAM and xDRAM video memory

• Monitor size, dot pitch and refresh rates

Demos

The instructor will run demonstrations on the in-class PC to help reinforce the concepts covered during this course. Most demos are impromptu, but typically include

• The layout of the memory map

• IRQ, DMA, I/O Port, and address space tracking

• Windows and Linux boot sequences

• How to navigate a graphical interface without a mouse

There will also be plenty of hardware components in the classroom, allowing the instructor to show and circulate devices that help the understanding of concepts covered during the course:

• Different motherboard designs

• CPUs

• Memory modules

• Various add-in card designs

• Open hard disks showing how data is stored

• Different cables

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