A no-nonsense, practical guide to current and future processor and computer architectures that enables you to design computer systems and develop better software applications across a variety of domains

Key Features

Understand digital circuitry through the study of transistors, logic gates, and sequential logic
Learn the architecture of x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V processors, iPhones, and high-performance gaming PCs
Study the design principles underlying the domains of cybersecurity, bitcoin, and self-driving cars

Book DescriptionAre you a software developer, systems designer, or computer architecture student looking for a methodical introduction to digital device architectures, but are overwhelmed by the complexity of modern systems? This step-by-step guide will teach you how modern computer systems work with the help of practical examples and exercises. You'll gain insights into the internal behavior of processors down to the circuit level and will understand how the hardware executes code developed in high-level languages.

This book will teach you the fundamentals of computer systems including transistors, logic gates, sequential logic, and instruction pipelines. You will learn details of modern processor architectures and instruction sets including x86, x64, ARM, and RISC-V. You will see how to implement a RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA board and write a quantum computing program and run it on an actual quantum computer.

This edition has been updated to cover the architecture and design principles underlying the important domains of cybersecurity, blockchain and bitcoin mining, and self-driving vehicles.

By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of modern processors and computer architecture and the future directions these technologies are likely to take.

What you will learn

Understand the fundamentals of transistor technology and digital circuits
Explore the concepts underlying pipelining and superscalar processing
Implement a complete RISC-V processor in a low-cost FPGA
Understand the technology used to implement virtual machines
Learn about security-critical computing applications like financial transaction processing
Get up to speed with blockchain and the hardware architectures used in bitcoin mining
Explore the capabilities of self-navigating vehicle computing architectures
Write a quantum computing program and run it on a real quantum computer

Who this book is forThis book is for software developers, computer engineering students, system designers, reverse engineers, and anyone looking to understand the architecture and design principles underlying modern computer systems: ranging from tiny, embedded devices to warehouse-size cloud server farms. A general understanding of computer processors is helpful but not required.