External Documents and Tools

These are links to documents and tools on other web sites and references to relevant books.

Related Web sites

• WWW Computer Architecture Home Page
• The VHDL Cookbook (PostScript - ??k)
• Rick's Miller homepage (local VHDL guru)
• VHDL International
• The Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present page - This is a nice list of microprocessor architectures, with some nice descriptions and comparisons. Among other things, it has a short description of the TMS 9900 microprocessor, a memory-to-memory architecture like our Freedom architecture.
• Documents on the Move project - includes some docs on transfer-triggered architecture (TTA), which is being considered at least for the FPU and possibly the whole CPU

Books

"Computer Architecture - a Quantitative Approach" by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, 2nd Ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 1996.

This is the reference book on Microprocessor Design, the Bible of CPU creation.

"Structured Computer Organization", Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 3rd. Ed., Prentice Hall 1990.

Tanenbaum bases his book on the fundamental idea that "Hardware and Software are logically equivalent." His work also suggests that complexity can be managed by "layering" the virtual computer system.

"High-Performance Computer Architecture", Harold S. Stone, 3rd. Ed., Addison-Wesley, 1993.

This book has excellent discussions of various advanced CPU design techniques, with plenty of examples: pipelines, ALUs, set-associative caches, etc...

"Introduction to Microcomputers - Volume 1: Basic Concepts" by Adam Osborne (Osborne/McGraw-Hill).

An excellent introductory book that explains how microprocessors are built internally. It's a bit outdated, but well-structured. All concepts are clearly explained, with diagrams.

Tools to download over the Web

Simulation Tools:

• Lotsa tools
• FreeHDL

Last updated September 13 1998 15:48:37 PM. Copyright 1998 The F-CPU Project. About This Site | Mirrors | Feedback