This page covers the two topics, which is ISA and MIPS, colored in the Fig 1 below.

ISA

• Define the interface between HW and SW

• Hard to change due to compatibility issues

• Various ISAs from chip vendors (e.g. x86, ARM, SPARC, etc.)

• 🔗 Blog writing about MIPS ISA

• Mainstream ISAs

  

                       PCs                                    Smartphone-like device      Digital home & Networking Equipment
  

Microarchitecture

• Implementation of ISA
• Organization of processors (and I/O subsystems)
• Examples: Depth of pipelines, Cache sizes and organization

eBooks

• ARM System Developer’s Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software

Topics

The Type of Pipeline

Flash Memory