Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits

Rating:
Summary: An exhausting collection of papers...
Review: Maybe my expectations were set too high. I had always found it amazing that designers of those state-of-the-art microprocessors were able to squeeze out cycles times that are almost an order of magnitude faster than what I can do on an ordinary asic flow and hoped for a well structured story, which is not to much to ask such an expensive book. I should haved noticed that the authors are listed as 'editors' because a good story is not what I got. Of course, there is some organization (big deal) into different parts (technology aspects, design techniques, clocking issues, fast adders and multipliers etc.) and there are some introductory chapters written by the editors but what you get is essentially a cut-and-paste collection of papers. Papers are usually exceptionally dryly written, cramming as much information as possible in a limited space. Sometimes going in too much detail, sometimes already assuming expert knowledge, almost never hands-on practical. And thus so is this book: overwhelming, dull and highly theoretical. Impossible to read this from front to cover. The statements from the editoral review that this book "Assumes basic knowledge of digital circuit design and device operation" is gross understatement. Be prepared for hard intellectual work while reading this. At one place, for example, a opcode selection circuit is described. For me, a good way of handling this in a textbook, would be to start with a description of the context in which it is used, going to a block diagram and refining into a detailed schematic that evolves into the final solution as trade-offs for speed and area are applied. Not here: the only thing you get is the final, very obscure schematic in domino logic that requires hard labour to figure out. But even after that you can't assess its usefullness since there is no context or anything to compare with. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have bought this book. All topics are handled and it has probably its place on some shelves as a reference, but I would have saved a lot of money by making use of the IEEE web access subscription of my employer instead.