This book presents as formal papers nearly all of the lectures given at the NATO advanced summer institute on Computer Architecture held at St. Raphael, France from September 12th - 24th 1976. It was not possible to include an important paper by G. Amdahl on the 470V6 System, nor papers by Mde. A. Recoque on distributed processing, Messrs. A. Maison and G. Debruyne on LSI technology, and K. Bowden. Computer architecture is a very diverse and expanding subject, consequently it was decided to limit the scope of the School to five main subject areas. These were: specific computer architectures, language orientated machines, associative processing, computer networks and specification and design methods. In addition an overall emphasis was placed on distributed and parallel processing and the need for an integrated hardware-software approach to design. Though some introductory material is included, this book is primarily intended for workers in the field of computer science and engineering who wish to update themselves on current topics in computer architecture. The main work of the School is well reflected in the collected papers, but it is impossible to convey the benefits obtained from the discussion groups and the continuous dialogue that was maintained throughout the School. The Editors would like to acknowledge with thanks the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, who financed the School, and the European Research Office of the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation for providing travel grants.

This book presents as formal papers nearly all of the lectures given at the NATO advanced summer institute on Computer Architecture held at St. Raphael, France from September 12th - 24th 1976. It was not possible to include an important paper by G. Amdahl on the 470V6 System, nor papers by Mde. A. Recoque on distributed processing, Messrs. A. Maison and G. Debruyne on LSI technology, and K. Bowden. Computer architecture is a very diverse and expanding subject, consequently it was decided to limit the scope of the School to five main subject areas. These were: specific computer architectures, language orientated machines, associative processing, computer networks and specification and design methods. In addition an overall emphasis was placed on distributed and parallel processing and the need for an integrated hardware-software approach to design. Though some introductory material is included, this book is primarily intended for workers in the field of computer science and engineering who wish to update themselves on current topics in computer architecture. The main work of the School is well reflected in the collected papers, but it is impossible to convey the benefits obtained from the discussion groups and the continuous dialogue that was maintained throughout the School. The Editors would like to acknowledge with thanks the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, who financed the School, and the European Research Office of the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation for providing travel grants.

Knowledge: A little light expels much darkness _ Bahya ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart During the early 1970s digital computer techniques concentrated on the computational and interfacing aspects of digital systems and the decade began as the age of both the mainframe computer and the minicomputer. Engineers and system designers needed to know the fundamentals of computer operation and how the practical limitations of the architectures of the day, the memory size, cost and performance could be overcome; it was for this reason that this book was first written. By 1980 the microprocessor revolution had arrived. As a result the microprocessor became a component of a system, rather than a system itself, and the need to understand the behaviour of the device became of even greater importance to the system designer. New developments in mainframe computers were few, with networks of minicomputers taking over their role in many instarices. The 1980 revision of this book took into account the major advances in semiconductor technology that had occurred since it was first published in 1972, and included material relevant to the microprocessor.