Microprocessor Design/Control and Datapath
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Most processors and other complicated hardware circuits are typically divided into two components: a datapath and a control unit. The datapath contains all the hardware necessary to perform all the necessary operations. In many cases, these hardware modules are parallel to one another, and the final result is determined by multiplexing all the partial results.
The control unit determines the operation of the datapath, by activating switches and passing control signals to the various multiplexers. In this way, the control unit can specify how the data flows through the datapath.
The width of the data path ...
- "There is only one mistake that can be made in a computer design that is difficult to recover from: not providing enough address bits for memory addressing and memory management." -- Gordon Bell and Bill Strecker, 1975[1]
- ↑ Engineering Education "Today in History" PDP-11 minicomputer introduced by Gordon Bell 2009; referring to "What we learned from the PDP-11" by Gordon Bell and Bill Strecker, 1975. Early version of the PDP-11 had a 16-bit address space. ... also quoted in the book "Electronics"
