Best Books To Learn About Microprocessors and GPU's

[Nylon Bullet]

Hello, I am a normal Electronics and Communication engineering student.

 

I am very interested to learn about Microprocessors, GPU's,from basics, architecture and fundamentals. I am willing to start from basic and slowly develop my understanding over time.

 

Problem is I have no knowledge about this(I just started my engineering course but am sure they won't teach about these things.) Can someone recommend really good books which teach about the architecture, fabrication, and all the things that form a processor or a GPU in an interactive manner, this is apart from my studies for personal knowledge development.

Several books I have checked start from the old 8086 Intel processors, even thought that's fine, I believe modern processor knowledge is important unless the traditional ones influence the modern design drastically. 

 

The book I am trying to look for is like "Ignition! is a history of liquid rocket propellants" which several of you might have heard of. It is written in an interactive manner with plenty of jokes. It is the kind of book I am looking for but whatever the best is, I will take it. Give me suggestions gentlemen.

 

and for the record I did google search books for all these things, what I did find was Quora posts with people badly advertising different books that are totally worse.

[lavablade02]

@DocSwagreccomends Practical Electronics for inventors, but is really serious. Seems like a REALLY niche subject.

[yosarianilives]

53 minutes ago, Nylon Bullet said:

Hello, I am a normal Electronics and Communication engineering student.

 

I am very interested to learn about Microprocessors, GPU's,from basics, architecture and fundamentals. I am willing to start from basic and slowly develop my understanding over time.

 

Problem is I have no knowledge about this(I just started my engineering course but am sure they won't teach about these things.) Can someone recommend really good books which teach about the architecture, fabrication, and all the things that form a processor or a GPU in an interactive manner, this is apart from my studies for personal knowledge development.

Several books I have checked start from the old 8086 Intel processors, even thought that's fine, I believe modern processor knowledge is important unless the traditional ones influence the modern design drastically. 

 

The book I am trying to look for is like "Ignition! is a history of liquid rocket propellants" which several of you might have heard of. It is written in an interactive manner with plenty of jokes. It is the kind of book I am looking for but whatever the best is, I will take it. Give me suggestions gentlemen.

 

and for the record I did google search books for all these things, what I did find was Quora posts with people badly advertising different books that are totally worse.

Read the wiki pages for every intel and AMD cpu arch. It should be a pretty good read. That's how I learned most of what I have, will also be more informative than the average LTT vid  

[Nylon Bullet]

3 minutes ago, yosarianilives said:

Read the wiki pages for every intel and AMD cpu arch. It should be a pretty good read. That's how I learned most of what I have, will also be more informative than the average LTT vid  

Yes my friend, thats where the issue lies. My eyes strain when I stare at too long into wiki, but my question is out of several books in this world, which is the best one written interactively.

[Nylon Bullet]

35 minutes ago, lavablade02 said:

@DocSwagreccomends Practical Electronics for inventors, but is really serious. Seems like a REALLY niche subject.

The book seems more like a manual and facts rather than explaining everything from scratch. Thanks thought my man.

[yosarianilives]

13 minutes ago, Nylon Bullet said:

Yes my friend, thats where the issue lies. My eyes strain when I stare at too long into wiki, but my question is out of several books in this world, which is the best one written interactively.

The wiki pages are written as a story. Pretty straightforward and easy read. Anything "easier" to read would be the same as watching a modern LTT vid hoping to find useful info on PC HW. Ie; devoid of any

[DanielMDA]

5 hours ago, Nylon Bullet said:

Hello, I am a normal Electronics and Communication engineering student.

 

I am very interested to learn about Microprocessors, GPU's,from basics, architecture and fundamentals. I am willing to start from basic and slowly develop my understanding over time.

 

Problem is I have no knowledge about this(I just started my engineering course but am sure they won't teach about these things.) Can someone recommend really good books which teach about the architecture, fabrication, and all the things that form a processor or a GPU in an interactive manner, this is apart from my studies for personal knowledge development.

Several books I have checked start from the old 8086 Intel processors, even thought that's fine, I believe modern processor knowledge is important unless the traditional ones influence the modern design drastically. 

 

The book I am trying to look for is like "Ignition! is a history of liquid rocket propellants" which several of you might have heard of. It is written in an interactive manner with plenty of jokes. It is the kind of book I am looking for but whatever the best is, I will take it. Give me suggestions gentlemen.

 

and for the record I did google search books for all these things, what I did find was Quora posts with people badly advertising different books that are totally worse.

I would recommend yo to read whitepapers, they give you an idea on how things work with some technical data. In terms of AMD GPUs, read these four:

 

1) Polaris Architecture (GCN 4th Gen [1.3]): http://radeon.com/_downloads/polaris-whitepaper-4.8.16.pdf

2) Compute Cores: https://www.amd.com/Documents/Compute_Cores_Whitepaper.pdf

3) Vega Architecture (GCN 5th Gen [1.4]): https://radeon.com/_downloads/vega-whitepaper-11.6.17.pdf

4) GCN Architecture (Graphics Core Next): https://www.amd.com/Documents/GCN_Architecture_whitepaper.pdf

 

Hope you like them. There are also CPU Whitepapers from Intel and AMD, and there are also GPU Whitepapers from Nvidia.

 

 

[hazeyez]

6 hours ago, Nylon Bullet said:

Hello, I am a normal Electronics and Communication engineering student.

 

I am very interested to learn about Microprocessors, GPU's,from basics, architecture and fundamentals. I am willing to start from basic and slowly develop my understanding over time.

 

Problem is I have no knowledge about this(I just started my engineering course but am sure they won't teach about these things.) Can someone recommend really good books which teach about the architecture, fabrication, and all the things that form a processor or a GPU in an interactive manner, this is apart from my studies for personal knowledge development.

Several books I have checked start from the old 8086 Intel processors, even thought that's fine, I believe modern processor knowledge is important unless the traditional ones influence the modern design drastically. 

 

The book I am trying to look for is like "Ignition! is a history of liquid rocket propellants" which several of you might have heard of. It is written in an interactive manner with plenty of jokes. It is the kind of book I am looking for but whatever the best is, I will take it. Give me suggestions gentlemen.

 

and for the record I did google search books for all these things, what I did find was Quora posts with people badly advertising different books that are totally worse.

@Nylon Bullet I have a great read for learning the fundamentals of computing, electrical engineering, architecture, and has chapters that are inclusive of microprocessors and GPU's.

 

"But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone" - By J. Clark Scott, can be purchased on Amazon kindle e-books for about $7.00.

 

Even if you are an intermediate-advanced student of computers - this is an excellent read that breaks the whole system down in layman's terms, and pulls it all together from how each piece operates individually to how every part affects the next, to build one machine - all while putting emphasis on electricity, engineers, architecture, etc.

 

Highly recommended and for $7.00 you can't go wrong!

 

let me know if you decide to purchase it I can give you some context

[DocSwag]

5 hours ago, Nylon Bullet said:

The book seems more like a manual and facts rather than explaining everything from scratch. Thanks thought my man.

A few you could check out.

 

Computer Organization and Design. There's a lot of visuals but I wouldn't really call it a fun book. It definitely focuses more on computer architecture though whereas the book @lavablade02 mentioned is more about electronics in general.

 

You could also look into Computer Systems: A programmer's perspective. There's a fair bit of interaction with a computer in it. That might be your best bet.

 

BTW if you need any PDFs, I could find the links and get those questionably legal pdfs.

[Nylon Bullet]

22 hours ago, yosarianilives said:

The wiki pages are written as a story. Pretty straightforward and easy read. Anything "easier" to read would be the same as watching a modern LTT vid hoping to find useful info on PC HW. Ie; devoid of any

Thanks my friend.

I agree that whitepapers and wiki are the best bet.

 

[Nylon Bullet]

17 hours ago, DocSwag said:

A few you could check out.

 

Computer Organization and Design. There's a lot of visuals but I wouldn't really call it a fun book. It definitely focuses more on computer architecture though whereas the book @lavablade02 mentioned is more about electronics in general.

 

You could also look into Computer Systems: A programmer's perspective. There's a fair bit of interaction with a computer in it. That might be your best bet.

 

BTW if you need any PDFs, I could find the links and get those questionably legal pdfs.

@DocSwag

Much appreciate for the help. But interactivity is the key currently because at this point I dont want semiconductors written in a textbook manner. However I will certainly check out the book. Thanks my friend.

[DocSwag]

6 hours ago, Nylon Bullet said:

@DocSwag

Much appreciate for the help. But interactivity is the key currently because at this point I dont want semiconductors written in a textbook manner. However I will certainly check out the book. Thanks my friend.

Computer architecture can get pretty complicated, so unfortunately there aren't really any "fun" books about it.

[Taja]

There is a book called "But how does it know?" Which explains how a cpu works, from the basics.

[Nylon Bullet]

On 9/20/2018 at 5:03 AM, Taja said:

There is a book called "But how does it know?" Which explains how a cpu works, from the basics.

Thank you my friend. I will certainly check it out.

[Nylon Bullet]

On 9/19/2018 at 11:59 PM, DocSwag said:

Computer architecture can get pretty complicated, so unfortunately there aren't really any "fun" books about it.

Thank you for the help.

 

Is there any sites you recommend to get these books from?

Thanks.

[DocSwag]

1 hour ago, Nylon Bullet said:

Thank you for the help.

 

Is there any sites you recommend to get these books from?

Thanks.

I just searched around for them. I didn't really get them from one specific place.

[SimplyChunk]

On 9/18/2018 at 6:08 PM, Nylon Bullet said:

Several books I have checked start from the old 8086 Intel processors

Considering we're STILL on the x86 architecture (OK AMD64 but that's based on x86) Then it's a really good place to start