Rechnerarchitektur

The compact textbook, tested in courses in Tübingen and Leipzig, describes the hardware characteristics of modern computer architectures and their specific and current implementations, depending on the manufacturer. The new edition has been completely updated and expanded. New chapters have been added on the design of a control unit for simple processors as well as on the latest developments in the field of 64-bit architectures, mainframes (parallel computers), and multimedia. Additionally, there is a free online service for using the book in teaching. Besides virtual memory management, microprogramming and pipeline processing, along with their implementation specifics, are discussed. The discussion gives considerable attention to computer architectures with superscalar and superpipeline functional units. State-of-the-art technologies (EPIC) and their implementations in 64-bit architectures (IA-64) are presented. The key mechanisms of predication, control speculation, data speculation, and software pipelining are explained through examples and contribute to the understanding of the new microprocessor families. The renaissance of mainframes as enterprise servers in internet computing is illustrated with the example of IBM's Parallel Sysplex.