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Understanding the Microprocessor
Citywide writes "Ars has a very thorough technical piece up entitled Understanding the Microprocessor. It's pitched lower than many Ars articles (all of which are a bit over my head, to be honest), but that's why it's worth checking out: it explains the fundamentals is a very clear and useful way. And as the author notes, this kind of information is really crucial to get a grip on before Hammer arrives."
If you are in that position,
chances are you don't need, or you could write this article.
Also, if you are a big enough player, you get some sample procs and run some benchmark tests, maybe even write some of your own.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I've been studying hardware design for a while now and the following course documents from the (former) ARSDigita university are a clear yet consise depiction of what you would learn in a beginnning microprocessor design course.
/
http://www.aduni.org/courses/how_computers_work
build one of these
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
No one with a clue would ever do this any other way than by buying/borrowing a system for evaluation and running the specific application as a benchmark.
The beauty of Hammer is that doing so will be quite inexpensive compared to other comparable options. :-)
I stand by my original post.
(BTW, my vote for most innovative Hammer feature is the integrated memory controller(s) - memory bandwidth scales with processor count in SMP systems.)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
For a more detailed treament of the topic, take a look at David Patterson's and John Hennessy's _Computer Organization & Design_. It is an excellent text book on the topic.
I am currently enjoying Charles Petzold's book "Code", which essentially walks you through the workings of a CPU by describing one built with telegraph equipment from the 19th century. Lots of interesting history as well. This is the best written popular tutorial on microprocessors I've seen.
This was definitely worth posting - it's a good, helpful summary. It's the kind of thing that I wish there was more of since I can pass the article on to people who need it.
I'd like to see a series of books on the way computers work, at various levels of knowledge, so people can get the knowledge in bite-sized chunks. It'd be helpful to me, since I often end up being "Mr. Explainer" and I'd LOVE to just hand someone a book and get back to work.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Do a google for "silicon zoo"; you should find a site which has loads of pictures of 'silicon art', basically 'doodles' (well, too high tech to call them doodles, really) made on production chips, in the die margins, whereever.
:)
One of them has a message to russian reverse engineers, in cyrilic russian, to the effect of "only steal from the best"
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?