Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar Processors

by John Paul Shen, Mikko H. Lipasti

Conceptual and precise, Modern Processor Design brings together numerous microarchitectural techniques in a clear, understandable framework that is easily accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students. Complex practices are distilled into foundational principles to reveal the authors' insights and hands-on experience in the effective design of contemporary high-performance micro-processors for mobile, desktop, and server markets. Key theoretical and foundational principles are presented in a systematic way to ensure comprehension of important implementation issues. The text presents fundamental concepts and foundational techniques such as processor design, pipelined processors, memory and I/O systems, and especially superscalar organization and implementations. Two case studies and an extensive survey of actual commercial superscalar processors reveal real-world developments in processor design and performance. A thorough overview of advanced instruction flow techniques, including developments in advanced branch predictors, is incorporated. Each chapter concludes with homework problems that will institute the groundwork for emerging techniques in the field and an introduction to multiprocessor systems. Not-for-sale instructor resource material available to college and university faculty only; contact publisher directly.

Genres: Computer Science, Nonfiction

642 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Alaksiej Kačanovič · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is very inhomogeneous. It is my first experience reading something about microprocessors. I didn't have any education in this area, and most of what I have read in this book was for me completely new. Some topics were explained very well, another barely clear. The first 5 chapters are basic and very well explain all important concepts, but later in the chapters about commercial processors without deep knowledge of the topic, it is very hard to understand anything. I even considered stopping reading the book, but chapter 9 is one of the best chapter in the book, it clarifies many moments about branch prediction. Last chapters 10 and 11 are also written quite well, except for the things which are left as concepts, and didn't find a realization in commercial products.

[Cole Strickler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authors of this book are the principal architects of the Intel P6 and there is a tell-all chapter that gives enough detailed info for a clone to be erected(would be a sweet RISC-V project!?), and that alone is worth the price of admission. There is also a wealth of gems that will build intuition for performance tuning and hardware design.

Good shit!

[Beach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting dive into what makes the puters and phones tick these days.