A few days ago
asked me a question on Notes:Do you have a good, modern foundational text reco for people trying to get more out of your newsletter?
What a great question!
BTW if you’re not subscribed to Venkatesh’s
then you should.I started writing a response in Notes but soon realized that any answer would be too long for a Note and probably of interest to subscribers who aren’t on Notes.
So this post is an attempt to answer this question. I’ll recommend four texts for anyone who wants to understand computer architecture. In each case, these books have been used extensively in computer architecture courses, over many years, and the authors have extensive and world-leading experience.
And, although these texts are paid for - and are fairly expensive - some come with accompanying free resources that anyone can download and learn from.
Note: Also see this post from last year for some more useful resouces.