ISA and execution model
Understand the software-visible contract: instructions, registers, privilege, exceptions, memory behavior, and extension mechanisms.
- ISA contracts
- Privilege and exceptions
- Memory model
Workload to machine
Computer Architecture Guide
Computer architecture connects software-visible behavior to the structures that execute it. Good architectural reasoning starts with workloads and contracts, then evaluates latency, throughput, energy, bandwidth, complexity, and correctness together.
Reason from workload behavior to microarchitectural choices and validate those choices with models, counters, and experiments.
Reviewed and updated July 2026
Coverage map
What this guide covers
Pipelines and hazards
Increase throughput while preserving dependencies, precise state, and correct recovery from control-flow changes.
- Data hazards
- Forwarding and stalls
- Branch recovery
Caches and virtual memory
Exploit locality while managing misses, replacement, translation, protection, and interactions with devices.
- Cache hierarchy
- TLBs and page walks
- AMAT
Interconnects and coherence
Move requests and data between agents while maintaining ordering, ownership, forward progress, and a coherent memory view.
- On-chip networks
- Coherence protocols
- Ordering and deadlock
Performance, power, and validation
Evaluate designs with representative workloads, analytical models, simulation, counters, and disciplined bottleneck analysis.
- CPI and throughput
- Roofline reasoning
- Performance per watt
Apply the concepts
Move from reading to reasoning.
Use the question bank to explain assumptions, debug failures, and validate tradeoffs in the language interviewers expect.