Interesting Computer Architecture Articles

For those who aren't in this class and came here hoping for pictures of pretty buildings, check out Computer architecture for Dummies, a simple but serious introduction to the topic.

• article on the Limits of Instruction Level Parallelism, analysing how far superscalar architectures can be taken
• Research Paper describing combined compiler/hardware implementation for providing high memory bandwidth for streaming applications (vector computing, multimedia, etc.)
• Collection of papers on advanced architectures at UC Irvine
• Article on speculative execution
• The M-Machine Project Page, a multi-threaded processor being developed at MIT
• A comparitive analysis of branch prediction schemes from Berkeley
• Limits of Control Flow on Parallelism
• more branch prediction information from Colorado
• Measuring Cache and TLB Performance and Their Effect of Benchmark Run Times
• Performance Characterization of Optimizing Compilers
• A thesis describing the multiscalar architecture (different from multithreaded architectures)
• Article studying data speculation, in which an instruction may be executed before its data hazards are resolved (in this case on a multiscalar processor)
• Article examining various mechanisms for software controlled speculative loads

• HP PA-RISC 2.0 extensions for 64-bit architecture and multimedia (gee, is there anybody who hasn't jumped on that bandwagon?)
• HP PA-8000 Microprocessor Report description
• HP's description of the 8500 microprocessor interesting in that it breaks from HP's tradition by having a large on-chip cache
• MPR article on HP PA-8x00 family
• Sun's UltraSparc architecture
• MIPS R10000 processor (MIPS' superscalar processor)
• MIPS' MDMX which is SGI's addition to the MIPS ISA for multimedia
• Power PC Family
• The PowerScale Architecture, a symmetric multiprocessor design using PowerPCs
• IBM RISC System/6000 Family

• Intel's Developers' site for Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium w/MMX, Pentium II, and Mobile Pentium
• Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual volume 1: Basic Architecture (in acrobat format)
• Slot One description (the Intel specific processor socket that will replace the PGA type sockets of previous motherboards now that Klamath is out)
• Cyrix 6x86 (the M1) and M2 processors
• Technical overview of MMX technology (Intel's addition to the 80x86 ISA for multimedia apps)
• How MMX will be implemented in Pentium and P6 processors
• AMD K6 Processor
• AMD K7 Processor
• Pentium Arch. Specs
• Cyrix's MediaGX processor, a complete system (including all memory, I/O, and expansion bus management) in two chips

• Research Paper on performance factors for superscalar processors
• SPEC website
• FAQ (Frequently asked questions) on SPEC marks
• Molecular Dynamics Benchmark (includes other benchmarking links)
• P-rating system a light description of an alternative performance indicator put forward by Intel's competitors, and vindication of the P-rating system by PCMag
• Winstone '97 (PC Magazine benchmark used by P-rating system)
• Intel Benchmarks

• An explanation of EDO DRAM, and a supplementary page with a timing diagram
• A rather technical description of Synchronous DRAM (what the chip pins do)
• The UltraSparc's cache coherency protocol, which handles coherency between the processor's internal cache, the external (L2) cache, and the rest of the system (DMA components and/or other processors)
• Advanced cache architecture with distributed cache control and hardware controlled prefetching

• Motorola's ColdFire, a RISC processor implementing a variable length instruction set adopted from the 68000 ISA (faces problems similar to the advanced x86 machines)
• Whitepaper on the architecture of Sun's picoJava I microprocessor (directly executes Java code without interpreter or compiler)
• The original counterflow pipeline processor article, and a site at Oregon State with lots of info (the research in the ISD lab is indirectly related to CFPP research)

• Panda Project Design of completely modular systems
• Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present
• CPU Info Center At Berkeley
• The Virtual Memory Tutorial (quite an impressive site)
• Course notes for a computer architecture class taught at BYU (more third year than fourth)
• A superscalar DLX simulator, for studying a superscalar implementation of H&P's RISC machine
• Detailed low-level info on assorted PC hardware, including SDRAM memory

• From an academic perspective (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• From a commercial perspective (Tom's Hardware Guide)

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  Last modified: April 97