Acceleration Mechanisms For Computer Performance Enhancements

Abstract Acceleration mechanisms are necessary to provide computer users with sufficient processing speed. However, because of the abundance of acceleration mechanisms, it is difficult to discern the relation between these mechanisms. Therefore this paper introduces an overview of acceleration mechanisms, in which acceleration mechanisms for single thread systems are divided according to the level in a computer system at which they are introduced. Two trends in acceleration mechanisms at the architectural level are the use of special purpose architectures and the reduction of hardware complexity. Acceleration mechanisms at the organizational level can be divided into two groups, related to latency and bandwidth. Both these groups have two components, storage and execution. The main techniques for acceleration at this level are pipelining and parallelism, which techniques can be applied to both storage and execution. Acceleration mechanisms at the realization level include the development of newer technologies and increases in packaging density. These mechanisms tend to be evolutionary.