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When I started my computing career by programming a PDP-11 computer
as a freshman in the university in early 1980s, I could not have dreamed
that one day I’d be able to design a processor. At that time, the freshmen
were only allowed to use PDP. Next year I was given the permission to use
the famous brand-new VAX-780 computer. Also, my new roommate at the
dorm had got one of the first personal computers, a Commodore-64 which
we started to explore together. Again, I could not have imagined that
hundreds of times the processing power will be available in an everyday
embedded device just a quarter of century later.
Little by little I delved into the design of digital circuits, and computer
architecture. I finally learned my lessons in RISC philosophy when I was
teaching computer architecture classes in early 1990s according to the
famous groundbreaking book by Hennessy and Patterson. At that time, I
had already started to design processors, first some simple configurable fil-
ters and then straightforward DSP cores. The story continued in a number
of different kinds of design projects purely in academia, as academia-
industry cooperation projects and as commercial developments in industry.
For me, this decade has meant the time to be back in academia, where I
have taught processor-design courses since 1999. A characteristic feature
to these courses has been the lack of a good course textbook. I have tried
out a few books, and used a scattered set of my own material trying bridge
the gaps that I perceived. Year after year I got more annoyed with the
absence of a textbook, until, after gaining some editor experience in an-
other book project, I decided that the book needed to be written.
I would like to thank my contact person at Springer, Mark de Jongh,
who believed in me right from the start, and all the contributors of this
book. A big part of the success of this project was that I knew some good
people and asked for their contribution. I had worked with many of them
previously in the annual International Symposium on System-on-Chip
since 1999, without realizing what kind of assets they represented. Thanks
also to all the people who used their valuable time to review the book
chapters. |
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