Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

Chapter 1. Architecture and Implementation

Computer science often distinguishes between abstraction and implementation—i.e., between the general and the particular. We may examine any computer system at two major levels: its architecture and its organization. Although numerous books convey both of these levels in their titles and contents, we are going to concentrate on architecture in this book. We first direct our readers toward an understanding of the distinction between these levels.

In the first decades of the history of computers, the sporadic emergence of new ideas and new companies resulted in a jumbled succession of disparate approaches to computer design. The design of the IBM^® System/360^™ series by Amdahl and his team, however, marked ...