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• Author: Gerrit A. Blaauw and F.P.Brooks
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; Facsimile edition (March 2, 1997)
• Publish Date: 1997-03-02
• Pages: 1264

In Computer Architecture, Blaauw and Brooks first develop a conceptual framework for understanding computer architecture. They then describe not only what present architectural practice is, but how it came to be so. A major theme is the early divergence and the later reconvergence of computer architectures. They examine both innovations that survived and became part of the standard computer, and the many ideas that were explored in real machines but did not survive. In describing the discards, they also address why these ideas did not make it. Computer Architecture analyzes and systematizes familiar design alternatives, and introduces the reader to unfamiliar ones. It illuminates with detailed executable descriptions of both early and more recent computers. The designers most important study is other people's designs. Computer Architecture's computer zoo will give the reader a unique resource for precise information on some 30 important machines. Armed with the factors (pro and con) on the various known solutions to design problems, readers will be better able to determine the most fruitful architectural course for their own designs. -- Midwest Book Review In Chapter 1, we demonstrate the use of APL for formal description of architectures (after Falkoff, Iverson, and Sussenguth). This yields a descriptive language which is executable, usable separately to describe the implementation level, allows verification that an implementation and its architecture are consistent, and allows a denotational, rather than operational, semantics. Chapter 1 also explores the opposing esthetic principles characterizing good architecture, and introduces decision trees as a formal tool for representing architectural choices. All the trees in Part I are components of one unified architecture decision tree. Chapter 2 introduces the concept of architecture as programming language design and presents a new treatment of the old issue of the optimal level of such languages (for example, RISC vs. object-oriented). Iverson's dual concepts of interpretation and representation are incorporated into a general paradigm. Chapter 3 treats the issues of machine addressing under a unified concept of naming and progressive name-binding, a concept suggested by F. Don Smith. Chapter 4 follows Bell and Newell in treating data representation in terms of abstract datatypes. Chapter 5 provides a unified view of invalid results in terms of the domains and ranges of representation transformations. Chapter 6 recognizes machine-language Branch operations as sub-primitives and treats all sequencing operations in terms of high-level control structures. Chapter 7 unifies the treatment of supervisory functions in terms of communicating asynchronous processes. Chapter 8 similarly treats I/O operations in terms of concurrent asynchronous processes and their processors. The system corollaries of I/O's inherent (1) asynchrony and (2) slowness are set forth. Overall, the least visible of the new results may prove to be the most useful:

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