You're reading from Modern Computer Architecture and Organization – Second Edition Learn x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures and the design of smartphones, PCs, and cloud servers

Product type Paperback

Published in May 2022

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781803234519

Length 666 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Tools

Blockchain

Concepts

Computer Architecture

Author (1):

Jim Ledin

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Table of Contents (21) Chapters

Preface

1. Introducing Computer Architecture FREE CHAPTER

2. Digital Logic

3. Processor Elements

4. Computer System Components

5. Hardware-Software Interface

6. Specialized Computing Domains

7. Processor and Memory Architectures

8. Performance-Enhancing Techniques

9. Specialized Processor Extensions

10. Modern Processor Architectures and Instruction Sets

11. The RISC-V Architecture and Instruction Set

12. Processor Virtualization

13. Domain-Specific Computer Architectures

14. Cybersecurity and Confidential Computing Architectures

15. Blockchain and Bitcoin Mining Architectures

16. Self-Driving Vehicle Architectures

17. Quantum Computing and Other Future Directions in Computer Architectures

18. Other Books You May Enjoy

19. Index

Appendix

Virtualizing modern processors

The hardware architectures of most general-purpose processor families have matured to the point where they fully support the execution of virtualized guest operating systems, at least in their higher-end variants. The following sections briefly introduce the virtualization capabilities provided by modern general-purpose processor families.

x86 processor virtualization

The x86 architecture was not originally designed to support the execution of virtualized operating systems.

As a result, x86 processors, from the earliest days through to the Pentium series, implemented instruction sets containing several unsafe but non-trapping instructions. These instructions caused problems with virtualization by, for example, allowing the guest operating system to access privileged registers that did not contain data corresponding to the state of the virtual machine.

X86 CURRENT PRIVILEGE LEVEL AND UNSAFE INSTRUCTIONS

In the x86 architecture...