Processor Microarchitecture: An Implementation Perspective

This lecture presents a study of the microarchitecture of contemporary microprocessors. The focus is on implementation aspects, with discussions on their implications in terms of performance, power, and cost of state-of-the-art designs. The lecture starts with an overview of the different types of microprocessors and a review of the microarchitecture of cache memories. Then, it describes the implementation of the fetch unit, where special emphasis is made on the required support for branch ...