Computer Architecture

This book lays out the concepts necessary to understand how a computer works.

For reasons of clarity, the authors have deliberately chosen examples that apply to machines from all eras, without having to water down the contents of the book. This choice helps to show how techniques, concepts and performances have evolved since the first computers.
The book is divided into five parts. The first four, which are of increasing difficulty, are the core of the book: “Elements of a Basic Architecture”, “Programming Model and Operation”, “Memory Hierarchy”, “Parallelism and Performance Enhancement”. The final part provides hints and solutions to the exercises in the book as well as appendices. The reader may approach each part independently based on their prior knowledge and goals.

Table of Contents

PART 1. ELEMENTS OF A BASIC ARCHITECTURE
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The Basic Modules
Chapter 3. The Representation of Information

PART 2. PROGRAMMING MODEL AND OPERATION
Chapter 4. Instructions
Chapter 5. The Processor
Chapter 6. Inputs and Outputs

PART 3. MEMORY HIERARCHY
Chapter 7. Memory
Chapter 8. Caches
Chapter 9. Virtual Memory

PART 4. PARALLELISM AND PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT
Chapter 10. Pipeline Architectures
Chapter 11. Example of an Architecture
Chapter 12. Caches in a Multiprocessor Environment
Chapter 13. Superscalar Architectures

PART 5. APPENDICES

Appendix A. Hints and Solutions
Appendix B. Programming Models