A comprehensive reference that examines the fundamentals of microprocessors in depth and explains all the principles of architecture that have a bearing on advanced microprocessors. It also describes both the CISC and the RISC families of machines, comparing and contrasting their performance in various applications. This revised and updated edition (1st ed., 1991) adds extensive material on such topics as memory hierarchy and pipelining, and on such new systems as Intel Pentium, the DEC Alpha AXP, PowerPC, MC88110, SuperSPARC, and the Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.