Computer architecture : a minimalist perspective (Series in engineering & computer science, Vol. 730)

'This book gives a fine introduction to basic computer architecture. A few years ago, this book would have interested only graduate computer science and engineering students. These days, some high school students even create Linux clusters, and interest in it may be even more widespread.'R.P. Sarna, Maine Maritime Academy in Choice, December 2003

The one instruction set computer (OISC) is the ultimate reduced instruction set computer (RISC). In OISC, the instruction set consists of only one instruction, and then by composition, all other necessary instructions are synthesized. This is an approach completely opposite to that of a complex instruction set computer (CISC), which incorporates complex instructions as microprograms within the processor. Computer Architecture: A Minimalist Perspective examines computer architecture, computability theory, and the history of computers from the perspective of one instruction set computing - a novel approach in which the computer supports only one, simple instruction. This bold, new paradigm offers significant promise in biological, chemical, optical, and molecular scale computers.

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1: One Instruction Set Computing. 1.1. What is One Instruction Set Computing? 1.2. Why Study OISC? 1.3. A Look Ahead. 1.4. Exercises. 2: Instruction Sets. 2.1. Elements of an Instruction. 2.2. Operands. 2.3. Instruction Formats. 2.4. Core Set of Instructions. 2.5. Addressing Modes. 2.6. Exercises. 3: Types of Computer Architecture. 3.1. Overview. 3.2.A Simple Taxonomy. 3.3. Accumulator. 3.4. Register-Memory. 3.5. Register-Oriented. 3.6. Exercises. 4: Evolution of Instruction Sets. 4.1. Motivation. 4.2. Evolution of Microprocessors. 4.3. Timeline. 4.4. Exercises. 5: CISC, RISC, OISC. 5.1. CISC versus RISC. 5.2. Is OISC a CISC or a RISC? 5.3. Processor Complexity. 5.4. Exercises. 6: OISC Architectures. 6.1. Single Instruction Types. 6.2. MOVE. 6.3. Comparing OISC Models. 6.4. Variants of SBN and MOVE. 6.5. OISC Continuum. 6.6. Exercises. 7: Historical Review of OISC. 7.1. Subtract and Branch if Negative (SBN). 7.2. MOVE-Based. 7.3. Timeline. 7.4. Exercises. 8: Instruction Set Completeness. 8.1. Instruction Set Completeness. 8.2. A Practical Approach to Determining Completeness. 8.3. Completeness of Two OISCs. 8.4. Exercises. 9: OISC Mappings. 9.1. Mapping OISC to Conventional Architectures. 9.2. Synthesizing Instructions. 9.3. Code Fragments. 9.4. Implementing OISC Using OISC. 9.5. Exercises. 10: Parallel Architectures. 10.1. Von Neumann Bottleneck. 10.2. Parallel Processing. 10.3. Flynn's Taxonomy for Parallelism. 10.4. Exercises. 11: Applications and Implementations. 11.1. OISC-Like Phenomena. 11.2. Field Programmable Gate Arrays. 11.3. Applications. 11.4. Image Processing. 11.5. Future Work with OISC. 11.6. Exercises. Appendix A: A Generic Microprocessor and OISC. Appendix B: One Instruction Set Computer Implementation. Appendix C: Dilation Code Implementation. Appendix D: Compiler Output for Dilation. Appendix E: OISC Equivalent of Dilation. Glossary. References. Index. About the Authors.