Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
BASIC INPUT/OUTPUT
3.1 ACCESSING I/O DEVICES
Components of computer – communicate through interconnection network
Interconnection network consists of – circuits – to transfer information between
the processor, the memory unit and a number of I/O devices.
Chapter 2 – discuss – address space
How processor access memory locations within the address space.
Load and Store instructions use addressing modes – generate effective address –
identify the desired location.
Same idea can be extended to deal with I/O devices.
Each I/O device must appear to the processor – consisting some addressable
locations same as the memory
Addresses from processor address space assigned to these I/O locations rather
than main memory
These locations – implemented as bit storage circuits (flip-flop) organized in the
form of registers
Referred as I/O registers
I/O devices and memory share same address space – arrangement – memory-
mapped I/O
Used in most computers
Same instructions that are used to access the memory can be used to transfer
data to or from an I/O device.
E.g. DATAIN – address of register in an input device
Instruction Load R2, DATAIN
reads the data from the DATAIN register and loads them into processor register
R2.
E.g. DATAOUT – address of register in an output device
Instruction Store R2, DATAOUT
sends the contents of register R2 to location DATAOUT
3.1.1 I/O DEVICE INTERFACE
I/O device – connected to the interconnection – using circuit called device interface
Provides the means for data transfer and for the exchange of status and control
information needed to facilitate the data transfers and govern the operation of the
device.
Interface includes some registers – accessed by the processor.
One register may serve as a buffer for data transfers, another may hold the
information about the current status of the device, and yet another may store the
information that controls the operation behavior of the device.
These data, status and control registers are accessed by program instructions as if
they were memory locations.
Typical transfers of information are between I/O registers and the registers in the
processor.