https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Ap...

https://shop.elsevier.com/books/computer-architecture/hennes... - If you want paperback + PDF for the same price as just the paperback from Amazon.

Some thoughts:

1. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-2nd-Understanding/dp...

2. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Low-Level-High-Level...

3. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-RISC-V-A...

4. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Ap...

5. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-MIPS-Arc...

6. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-ARM-Arch...

7. https://www.amazon.com/Models-Computation-Introduction-Compu...

To be fair NVIDIA used to publish more detailed "white paper" for their GPUs ex. [1] and CPU textbooks like H&P [2] draws a lot of details from these. This less detailed "whitepaper" still has a scent of these old tradition.

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/nvidia-ampere-ga-102-gpu-...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Jo...

These projects are really fun. On the other hand, you might want to learn in a way that lets you build hardware (esp for FPGA's). For that, I suggest a few types of books with examples:

- Computer architecture or CPU design book covering modern designs with their tradeoffs

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Ap...

- Introduction to Verilog or VHDL (languages for hardware) maybe on FPGA's or well-known boards

https://www.amazon.com/Programming-FPGAs-Getting-Started-Ver...

- High Speed Digital Design (many recommended it)

https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp...

- Cookbook with many examples for FPGA's

I don't have one. Most with these titles are expensive. One that looked promising had bad reviews. I'll leave it to HN to fill in the blanks.

- High-level synthesis

Most exciting one I remember when I stopped researching this stuff was Synflow. I don't know if they're still around.

https://www.synflow.com/

Before that, I had saved Baranov's work which showed how to turn Abstract, State Machines into actual hardware. It was like a how-to on high-level synthesis that he used commercially at Synthezza. I still share them periodically in case someone wants to build an OSS version. I also saw ASM's used in verifying compilers and hardware in separate work. There's a good chance someone can turn many things into a unified, field theory of sorts using ASM's.

https://www.amazon.com/Finite-State-Machines-Algorithmic-Com...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/second-ebook-samary-baranov-h...

Originally MIPS (or DLX) was the dominant architecture used for teaching computer architecture because the standard Computer Architecture textbook (by one of the main designers of MIPS, David Patterson [1] along with John L. Hennessy [2]) was used in most universities [3]. These two authors were basically the university-lead designers of the RISC philosophy. Patterson's team designed the RISC-I and RISC-II processors (Berkeley RISC [4]). Hennessy and his team designed the MIPS processors (Stanford MIPS [5]). This culmination eventually begot the RISC-V. So yeah, the RISC-V is now the dominant architecture used for teaching computer architecture as they now use RISC-V to teach computer architecture with their latest book edition [6]. Also for more information on that, read [7].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Patterson_(computer_scie...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Hennessy

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Jo...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_RISC

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_MIPS

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-RISC-V-A...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#History

> If your point is that this second FP32 unit can't always be used at 100%

My point is that the second FP32 unit is not a core, in the sense of https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Jo... which, it is my understanding, was a well-established standard; nothing more, nothing less.

This is THE textbook on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Jo...

There are older editions available free online that cover the same concepts, they just don't have the very latest info.

I'd suggest reading the wiki articles about it for an introduction, and Ch 5 of https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Jo... for a detailed understanding.

Right now you're asserting things about all this, while not being familiar with relatively basic aspects of how it works.

> What books or online courses should I look into to know about memory, flops, and things like that?

What you are after are books/courses on "architecture", I think. A classic book on the subject is Hennessy & Patterson.

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Sixth-Quantitat...

A computer architecture class. For books, [1] is what you will probably use in any decent computer architecture class, and [2] is a good read from a more general audience perspective, if a bit dated.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitat...

2. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Machine-Introduction-Microproc...

I also recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitat...

> by Jason Robert Carey Patterson

Is the author related to David Patterson?

(Known from [1])

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitati...

Hardware doesn't work like this. You might want to read Hennessy and Patterson, and the original RISC I paper.

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Edition-Qu...

http://www.cecs.pdx.edu/~alaa/ece587/papers/patterson_isca_1...

Patterson and Hennessy worked together to write http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Edition-Qu...

The vast majority of practical references in the book are based on the MIPS architecture (as an example of a RISC processor).

Great suggestion.

I flipped through Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach (http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitati...) at the bookstore the other day and it looked interesting, but that's all I could gather in the short time I had.

From the ground up? Well, there's always the source:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectu...

For learning assembly? For MASM I enjoyed this book years ago:

http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computer...

For GAS something like this might be more appropriate:

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard...

Patterson & Hennessy is used a lot in colleges to teach low-level architecture and assembly:

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitati...