A modern general-purpose computer system consists of one or more CPUs and a number of device controllers connected through a common bus that provides access between components and shared memory(Figure 1.2). Each device controller is in charge of a specific type of device (for example, a disk drive, audio device, or graphics display). Depending on the controller, more than one device may be attached. For instance, one system USB port can connect to a USB hub, to which serveral devices can connect, A device controller maintains some local buffer storage and a set of special-purpose registers. The device controller is responsible for moving the data between the peripheral devices that it controls and its local buffer storage.
Typically, operating systems have a device driver for each device controller. This device driver understands the device controller and providers the rest of the operating system with a uniform interface to the device. The CPU and the device controllers can execute in parallel, competing for memory cycles. To ensure orderly access to the shared memory, a memory controller synchronizes access to the memory.
In the following subsections, we describe some basics of how such a system operates, focusing on three key aspects of the system. We start with interrupts, which alert the CPU to events that require attention. We then discuss storage structure and I/O structure.
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