Instruction Set Architectures (ISA)

For next time, please read Appendix B, concentrating on Sections 2 - 6.

If you don't have much exposure to this topic, I recommend skimming Appendix J.2 (on the CD) to get a feel for the wide variety of ISAs. There's also some interesting historical info (for example, Figure J.35 shows the lineage of RISC processors).

Finally, if you are interested in history, I'd recommend Appendix K. Section 2 is a history of the very earliest machines, while Section 3 is about the development of ISAs.