May 2024
Intermediate to advanced
560 pages
14h 32m
English

Modern CPUs are some of the most complex structures known to humanity, but the basic concepts underlying them, such as executing instructions sequentially or jumping forward or backward to different instructions, are actually quite simple and haven’t changed for over 150 years. To ease our way into the study of CPU architecture, this chapter introduces these fundamental concepts by looking at a related but simpler system: a mechanical music player. You’ll then see how the same concepts, together with RAM, form the basis of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Studying—and programming—this mechanical system will make ...
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