CPU Design: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

I am honored to write the foreword for Chandra Thimmannagari’s book on CPU design. Chandra’s book provides a practical overview of Microprocessor and high end ASIC design as practiced today. It is a valuable addition to the literature on CPU design, and is made possible by Chandra’s unique combination of extensive hands-on CPU design experience at companies such as AMD and Sun Microsystems and a passion for writing. Technical books related to CPU design are almost always written by researchers in academia or industry and tend to pick one area, CPU architecture/Bus architecture/ CMOS design that is the area of expertise of the author, and present that in great detail. Suchbooks are of great value to students and practitioners in that area. However, engineers working on CPU design need to develop an understanding of areas outside their own to be effective. CPU design is a multi dimensional problem and one dimensional optimization is often counterproductive.