Introduction to Computer Architecture

Hello everybody. Welcome to the first lecture, which is a lecture on introduction to computer architecture. The aim of this particular lecture is to first give you an overview of the field, which is computer architecture. And then also to give you an overview of the book that this particular chapter is based on. It's the first chapter of the

book Computer Organization and Architecture published by McGraw Hill in 2015. So towards the end of this chapter, I'll show you the outline of the way concepts are presented in the book. And how the rest of the lectures will proceed. Let us begin by describing what exactly is computer architecture. So the answer is very very simple. It's

a study of computers. So computers as you know are there everywhere. The computer that I'm using at the moment to record this video. Computers are used in cell phones, in cameras. They nowadays computers are there in watches. So they're almost there everywhere. So let's distinguish between two kinds of terms that are used for the study of

computers. The first is computer architecture. And the second is computer organization. So computer architecture is the view of a computer that is presented to software designers. Which essentially means that it is an interface or a specification that uh software designers see. It's a view that they see of this is how the computer

works and this is how they should write software for it. Whereas computer organization is the actual implementation of a computer in hardware. Often times the terms computer architecture and computer organization are actually confused or computer architecture is used for both. So that is common. But we should keep in mind that there are two separate terms.