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Computer Architecture Reference Library

This page is a verified index of primary sources for computer architecture: official documentation, developer and API portals, source repositories, SDKs, downloadable or offline documentation, a two-track learning path, and free-access research literature.

It is a navigation layer, not a tutorial. Where the rest of this book explains a concept, this page tells you which document to open to get the authoritative answer, and in what order to read things. Every link was HTTP-verified on the date shown below; sources that block automated checkers but work in a browser are flagged rather than silently dropped.

ISA specifications, open-source cores, simulators, EDA toolchains, performance-analysis tooling, and a two-track learning path — from NAND gates to out-of-order execution and open silicon.

63 entries across 7 categories, plus 53 education & reference-implementation resources (22 basic / 31 advanced), plus 12 video resources and 6 conference sources.

Every link HTTP-verified on 2026-10-07.

Intel, AMD and Arm developer portals return 403 to automated clients but load normally in a browser.

Contents

1. Instruction set architectures & vendor documentation

Intel (x86-64)

  • Docs: intel.com/content/…
  • Developer / API: intel.com/content/…
  • SDKs & repos: Intel oneAPI, ISPC, VTune, SDE; intrinsics guide
  • Downloadable / offline: The Software Developer’s Manual (SDM) ships as a ~5000-page PDF set, plus the separate Optimization Reference Manual
  • Note: The SDM is the single most important document in x86 work. Volume 2 (instruction set) is the part you’ll actually live in. Site 403s to bots but loads in a browser.

AMD (x86-64)

  • Docs: amd.com/en/search/documentation/hub.html
  • SDKs & repos: AOCC compiler, AOCL libraries, uProf profiler
  • Downloadable / offline: AMD64 Architecture Programmer’s Manual, volumes 1-5, all free PDFs
  • Note: Read alongside the Intel SDM — they disagree in instructive places, especially on memory ordering.

Arm

  • Docs: developer.arm.com/documentation
  • Developer / API: developer.arm.com
  • SDKs & repos: Arm Compiler, Arm NN, CMSIS, Streamline
  • Downloadable / offline: Arm Architecture Reference Manual (the ‘Arm ARM’) free PDF; per-core Technical Reference Manuals
  • Note: Note the split: the Architecture Reference Manual is the ISA; the TRM is one specific core’s implementation. People conflate these constantly.

RISC-V International

  • Docs: riscv.org/technical/specifications
  • Developer / API: riscv.org
  • Source: github.com/riscv/riscv-isa-manual
  • SDKs & repos: The whole ISA is developed in the open on GitHub — issues and PRs included
  • Downloadable / offline: Unprivileged and Privileged spec PDFs built from the repo per ratified release
  • Note: The only major ISA whose specification you can read the git history of. Hugely valuable for understanding why a design is the way it is.

IBM Power

SiFive

  • Docs: sifive.com/documentation
  • Source: github.com/sifive
  • SDKs & repos: Freedom E SDK, core generators, SiFive Insight
  • Downloadable / offline: Per-core manuals as PDF
  • Note: Commercial RISC-V implementer; manuals are a good bridge from spec to silicon.

NVIDIA GPU architecture

  • Docs: docs.nvidia.com/cuda
  • Developer / API: developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit
  • Source: github.com/NVIDIA/cuda-samples
  • SDKs & repos: CUDA Toolkit, Nsight Compute/Systems, CUTLASS, cuBLAS
  • Downloadable / offline: CUDA C++ Programming Guide and the per-architecture whitepapers (Hopper, Blackwell) as PDFs
  • Note: The CUDA Programming Guide’s memory-hierarchy chapters are the best free GPU architecture text available.

Apple Silicon

  • Docs: developer.apple.com/documentation
  • SDKs & repos: Metal, Accelerate, Instruments
  • Downloadable / offline: Apple Silicon CPU Optimization Guide (PDF)
  • Note: Sparse official microarchitectural detail; the community reverse-engineering (Asahi Linux, Dougall Johnson) fills most of the gap.

2. Open-source cores & SoC platforms

Rocket Chip

BOOM

Chipyard

  • Docs: chipyard.readthedocs.io
  • Source: github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard
  • SDKs & repos: Full agile SoC design framework: cores, accelerators, RTL sim, VLSI flow
  • Downloadable / offline: Sphinx docs; repo cloneable
  • Note: The integration layer that makes the Berkeley ecosystem usable as one thing.

CVA6 (OpenHW)

  • Docs: github.com/openhwgroup/cva6
  • Source: github.com/openhwgroup/cva6
  • SDKs & repos: Application-class 64-bit RISC-V core in SystemVerilog, Linux-capable
  • Downloadable / offline: In-repo docs
  • Note: SystemVerilog rather than Chisel — easier if you came from industry RTL.

Ibex

VexRiscv

PicoRV32

OpenTitan

  • Docs: opentitan.org
  • Developer / API: opentitan.org/book
  • Source: github.com/lowRISC/opentitan
  • SDKs & repos: Open-source silicon root of trust; exemplary documentation and verification practice
  • Downloadable / offline: Online book, repo cloneable
  • Note: Worth reading purely as an example of how hardware projects should be documented.

3. Simulators, emulators & modelling tools

gem5

  • Docs: gem5.org/documentation
  • Developer / API: gem5.org
  • Source: github.com/gem5/gem5
  • SDKs & repos: The standard architecture research simulator: CPU models, cache hierarchies, full-system boot
  • Downloadable / offline: Online docs + learning-gem5 tutorial series
  • Note: If you read an architecture paper with simulated results, it was probably gem5.

QEMU

  • Docs: qemu.org/docs/master
  • Developer / API: qemu.org
  • Source: github.com/qemu/qemu
  • SDKs & repos: Functional emulation and virtualization across every major ISA; TCG dynamic translation
  • Downloadable / offline: Sphinx docs per release
  • Note: Functional, not timing-accurate — know the difference before you cite numbers.

Spike

Verilator

  • Docs: verilator.org/guide/latest
  • Source: github.com/verilator/verilator
  • SDKs & repos: Compiles Verilog/SystemVerilog to fast C++ — the free path to cycle-accurate RTL simulation
  • Downloadable / offline: Sphinx guide
  • Note: Fast enough to boot Linux on an RTL model. Makes serious hardware work possible without licences.

Ramulator 2

DRAMsim3

CACTI

Gemmini

4. Hardware description, synthesis & open EDA

Chisel

  • Docs: chisel-lang.org
  • Developer / API: chisel-lang.org/docs
  • Source: github.com/chipsalliance/chisel
  • SDKs & repos: Scala-embedded hardware construction language behind Rocket, BOOM and Chipyard
  • Downloadable / offline: Online docs + bootcamp
  • Note: Generators rather than instances — a genuinely different way to think about RTL.

Yosys

OpenROAD

OpenLane

SkyWater SKY130 PDK

5. Performance analysis & microarchitectural measurement

Agner Fog’s optimization manuals

  • Docs: agner.org/optimize
  • SDKs & repos: Instruction tables, microarchitecture guide, calling conventions, vector class library
  • Downloadable / offline: Five free PDFs, continuously updated since the 1990s
  • Note: The instruction tables and the microarchitecture manual are indispensable and have no official equivalent.

uops.info

  • Docs: uops.info
  • SDKs & repos: Automatically measured latency, throughput and port usage for x86 instructions
  • Downloadable / offline: Downloadable XML/HTML dataset
  • Note: Where you go when the vendor manual is vague or wrong about instruction cost.

llvm-mca

perf

Perf Ninja

Algorithmica HPC

  • Docs: en.algorithmica.org/hpc
  • SDKs & repos: Free online book on modern hardware performance: caches, SIMD, branch prediction, pipelining
  • Downloadable / offline: Online, printable
  • Note: Exceptionally good and far too little known.

6. Reverse engineering, commentary & live tooling

Compiler Explorer (godbolt)

  • Docs: godbolt.org
  • Source: github.com/compiler-explorer/compiler-explorer
  • SDKs & repos: Compile any language with any compiler and see the assembly instantly; self-hostable
  • Downloadable / offline: Entire site runs locally from the repo
  • Note: The fastest feedback loop that exists for understanding what the machine actually does. Use it constantly.

Intel Intrinsics Guide

  • Docs: intel.com/content/…
  • SDKs & repos: Searchable reference for every x86 SIMD intrinsic with latency and throughput
  • Downloadable / offline: Web application; data embedded in the page
  • Note: 403s to bots, loads in a browser. Indispensable for SIMD work.

Chips and Cheese

  • Docs: chipsandcheese.com
  • SDKs & repos: Independent microarchitecture analysis with original microbenchmarks
  • Downloadable / offline: Free articles
  • Note: Currently the best independent source for measured details on new CPUs and GPUs that vendors do not publish.

Real World Technologies

  • Docs: realworldtech.com
  • SDKs & repos: David Kanter’s long-form microarchitecture analyses
  • Downloadable / offline: Free archive
  • Note: The archive of deep-dive articles on past architectures remains the best written material of its kind.

OpenSBI

LiteX

Amaranth HDL

cocotb

  • Docs: docs.cocotb.org
  • Source: github.com/cocotb/cocotb
  • SDKs & repos: Write RTL testbenches in Python against Verilator, Icarus or commercial simulators
  • Downloadable / offline: Sphinx docs
  • Note: Verification without learning SystemVerilog testbench constructs. Pairs well with Verilator.

7. Research papers & open-access literature

arXiv

  • Docs: arxiv.org
  • Developer / API: info.arxiv.org/help/api/index.html
  • SDKs & repos: Preprints across all of CS; most systems, ML and PL work appears here before publication
  • Downloadable / offline: Every paper is a free PDF. Bulk access documented at info.arxiv.org/help/bulk_data/index.html; a full-text API at export.arxiv.org
  • Note: Not peer-reviewed. Treat an arXiv-only paper as a claim, not a result — but it is where you will read almost everything first.

ar5iv

  • Docs: ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org
  • SDKs & repos: Renders any arXiv paper as responsive HTML instead of PDF
  • Downloadable / offline: Free; swap arxiv.org/abs/ID for ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/ID
  • Note: Makes papers readable on a phone and searchable in-page. Underused.

alphaXiv

  • Docs: alphaxiv.org
  • SDKs & repos: arXiv papers with a public comment and discussion layer
  • Downloadable / offline: Free
  • Note: Useful when a paper is contested — the discussion often contains the critique you were looking for.

Semantic Scholar

  • Docs: semanticscholar.org
  • Developer / API: api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1
  • SDKs & repos: 200M+ papers with citation graph, influential-citation scoring and TLDR summaries
  • Downloadable / offline: Free Graph API (semanticscholar.org/product/api), bulk datasets available on request
  • Note: The best free citation graph. ‘Highly influential citations’ is a genuinely useful filter for finding what actually mattered.

OpenAlex

  • Docs: openalex.org
  • Developer / API: api.openalex.org/works
  • SDKs & repos: Fully open catalogue of works, authors, venues and institutions; successor to Microsoft Academic Graph
  • Downloadable / offline: Entirely free API with no key required; complete database snapshots downloadable
  • Note: The only large-scale bibliographic database that is open all the way down, including bulk snapshots.

DBLP

  • Docs: dblp.org
  • Developer / API: dblp.org/faq/13501473.html
  • SDKs & repos: Authoritative CS bibliography — complete author and venue listings
  • Downloadable / offline: Free; full XML dump downloadable
  • Note: The fastest way to find everything a given researcher has published, and to see a conference’s full programme by year.

OpenReview

  • Docs: openreview.net
  • Developer / API: docs.openreview.net
  • Source: github.com/openreview
  • SDKs & repos: ICLR, NeurIPS, COLM and dozens of other venues — papers plus the full review threads
  • Downloadable / offline: Free; REST API
  • Note: Reading the reviews and author rebuttals teaches you how the field evaluates work. Nothing else exposes this.

CORE

  • Docs: core.ac.uk
  • Developer / API: core.ac.uk/services/api
  • SDKs & repos: Aggregates 300M+ open-access papers from repositories worldwide
  • Downloadable / offline: Free API and bulk datasets
  • Note: Good for finding the green open-access copy when a publisher’s version is paywalled.

Unpaywall

  • Docs: unpaywall.org
  • Developer / API: api.unpaywall.org
  • SDKs & repos: Finds legal free copies of paywalled papers via DOI
  • Downloadable / offline: Free API; browser extension
  • Note: Legal, author-deposited copies only. Install the extension and most paywalls simply stop appearing.

Papers We Love

  • Docs: paperswelove.org
  • Source: github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love
  • SDKs & repos: A curated, categorised repository of classic CS papers with local meetup talks
  • Downloadable / offline: Repo cloneable; many PDFs mirrored in-repo
  • Note: The best starting point if you do not yet know which papers matter in a subfield.

The Morning Paper (archive)

  • Docs: blog.acolyer.org
  • SDKs & repos: Adrian Colyer’s daily paper summaries, 2014-2021
  • Downloadable / offline: Free archive, still online
  • Note: No longer updated, but the back catalogue of ~1000 summarised papers is one of the great free CS resources.

USENIX Proceedings

  • Docs: usenix.org/publications/proceedings
  • SDKs & repos: OSDI, SOSP (co-published), NSDI, ATC, FAST, Security — the core systems venues
  • Downloadable / offline: Every paper free, immediately, with no membership. Often with recorded talks
  • Note: USENIX made everything open access years before the rest of the field. If a systems paper exists, check here first.

ACM Digital Library

  • Docs: dl.acm.org
  • SDKs & repos: SIGMOD, ASPLOS, PLDI, POPL, SoCC and the ACM journals
  • Downloadable / offline: Partly open: ACM Open and author-paid OA papers are free; others are paywalled
  • Note: 403s to automated clients; loads in a browser. For paywalled items, check arXiv, the author’s homepage or Unpaywall first — the free copy usually exists.

IEEE Xplore

  • Docs: ieeexplore.ieee.org
  • SDKs & repos: ISCA, MICRO, HPCA and the IEEE journals
  • Downloadable / offline: Mostly paywalled; abstracts free
  • Note: Almost always worth searching the author’s page or arXiv instead. Architecture authors in particular post preprints widely.

DROPS / LIPIcs (Dagstuhl)

  • Docs: drops.dagstuhl.de
  • SDKs & repos: ECOOP, ITP, CONCUR, SAT and many theory venues
  • Downloadable / offline: 100% open access, free PDFs, Creative Commons licensed
  • Note: A fully open publisher. Every paper, always free, no exceptions.

arXiv cs.AR (Hardware Architecture)

  • Docs: arxiv.org/list/cs.AR/recent
  • SDKs & repos: Daily preprints in computer architecture
  • Downloadable / offline: Free
  • Note: Lower volume than cs.LG; genuinely feasible to skim weekly.

ACM SIGARCH

  • Docs: sigarch.org
  • SDKs & repos: The architecture special interest group; runs ‘Computer Architecture Today’
  • Downloadable / offline: Blog free; proceedings via ACM DL
  • Note: The blog is the field’s informal commentary channel — often where debates happen before they reach papers.

Hot Chips

  • Docs: hotchips.org
  • SDKs & repos: Industry symposium where vendors present real shipping silicon
  • Downloadable / offline: Slide decks and many talks posted free after each year
  • Note: The only venue where you reliably get microarchitectural detail on products straight from the designers.

NVIDIA Research

  • Docs: research.nvidia.com/publications
  • SDKs & repos: GPU architecture, interconnect, accelerators, graphics
  • Downloadable / offline: Free PDFs
  • Note: Read with the per-architecture whitepapers; the research papers explain the reasoning.

Onur Mutlu’s publications

  • Docs: people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu
  • SDKs & repos: Memory systems, RowHammer, processing-in-memory
  • Downloadable / offline: All papers free from the page
  • Note: An entire subfield’s output, all free, organised by topic, with matching lecture videos.

Education & reference implementations

Two tracks: Basic builds the foundations, Advanced is about reading and extending real implementations. Everything listed is free and publicly accessible.

Basic

22 resources across 5 topics.

Build the whole stack yourself

Architecture courses with public material

Specifications to read early

First hands-on projects

  • PicoRV32 — Read a complete working CPU in one sitting, then modify it.
  • Verilator — Simulate your RTL for free, fast enough to be interesting.
  • Spike (RISC-V reference sim) — Compare your implementation against the golden model.
  • QEMU — Understand emulation before you tackle timing simulation.
  • learning gem5 — Follow the ‘Learning gem5’ tutorial track before touching research configs.

Finding and reading papers

  • Papers We Love — Start here when you do not yet know which papers matter. Curated by subfield, with recorded talks.
  • The Morning Paper archive — Around a thousand papers summarised in plain language. No longer updated; still one of the best free CS resources.
  • Semantic Scholar — Free citation graph. The ‘highly influential citations’ filter is the fastest way to find what a paper actually changed.
  • Unpaywall — Install the extension. Most paywalls stop appearing, legally, because the author deposited a copy.
  • ar5iv — Read any arXiv paper as HTML instead of a two-column PDF. Swap arxiv.org/abs for ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html.

Advanced

31 resources across 6 topics.

Microarchitecture in depth

  • BOOM out-of-order core — The clearest readable implementation of register renaming, issue queues and speculation.
  • BOOM documentation — Explains the microarchitecture before you dive into the Chisel.
  • Rocket Chip — The in-order counterpart. Diff the two to isolate what OoO actually costs.
  • CVA6 — Same class of core in SystemVerilog — useful if Chisel is the obstacle.
  • Agner Fog microarchitecture manual — Per-generation detail on real Intel, AMD and VIA pipelines that vendors do not publish.
  • uops.info — Measured ground truth for instruction cost.

Memory systems

  • Ramulator 2 — Model DRAM properly instead of assuming fixed latency.
  • DRAMsim3 — Alternative DRAM model; cross-check results across both.
  • CACTI — Put area and energy numbers on your cache design choices.
  • Linux kernel memory-management docs — Where the architecture meets the OS: TLBs, huge pages, NUMA.

Build real silicon

  • Chipyard — Integrate cores, accelerators and peripherals into a simulatable, synthesizable SoC.
  • Chisel — The generator-based design approach the Berkeley stack is built on.
  • Yosys — Open synthesis.
  • OpenROAD — Open place and route, all the way to GDSII.
  • OpenLane — The automated flow that ties it together.
  • SkyWater SKY130 PDK — A real, open process. Your design can actually be fabricated.
  • OpenTitan — Study this for verification methodology and documentation discipline, not just the design.

Accelerators & domain-specific architecture

  • Gemmini — Systolic-array generator — the accessible route into ML accelerator design.
  • CUDA C++ Programming Guide — The memory hierarchy and warp-execution chapters are real architecture documentation.
  • CUDA samples — Reference kernels showing what the hardware rewards.
  • Triton — Where compiler design and GPU architecture meet; see the PL/compilers index too.

Performance engineering

  • Algorithmica HPC — Free book: SIMD, cache-aware algorithms, branch prediction, with measurements throughout.
  • Perf Ninja — Graded optimization exercises against real hardware counters.
  • easyperf — Companion blog and the free performance-tuning book.
  • llvm-mca — Static throughput analysis of your hot loop.
  • Linux perf — Counter-based measurement on real silicon.

Research venues

  • ISCA — The flagship architecture conference.
  • MICRO — Microarchitecture-focused; often the most readable of the four.
  • ASPLOS — Where architecture, OS and languages intersect — the most cross-cutting venue.
  • HPCA — High-performance architecture.
  • gem5 — Learn it if you intend to publish; most results in these venues are produced with it.

Video courses, channels & talks

12 resources across 1 group. Every channel and playlist below was fetched and title-verified on 2026-10-09. Handles drift and several plausible-looking handles resolve to the wrong channel, so a 200 response is not proof of identity — the links here were each checked against the channel title.

Channels & conference recordings

  • Onur Mutlu — Full graduate lecture series from digital design through memory systems — the best free depth on caches and DRAM.
  • Onur Mutlu Lectures — Separate archive channel for Mutlu lecture recordings.
  • CS61C — Berkeley CS61C recordings — RISC-V, caches, SIMD, with the labs.
  • UC Berkeley — EECS course and seminar recordings.
  • Computerphile — Short, well-made explainers; the right first stop before a spec.
  • Branch Education — Animated deep dives into CPUs, caches and memory — strong mental models, not authoritative.
  • NVIDIA Developer — GTC talks on GPU architecture and parallel programming; primary for accelerator design.
  • USENIX — Conference recordings for most USENIX papers — free video, the fastest route into a systems paper.
  • linux.conf.au — linux.conf.au talks: kernel, filesystems and low-level systems depth.
  • Hot Chips — The annual chip-architecture symposium: talks by the teams that built the hardware.
  • Google TechTalks — Architecture and systems talks from visiting researchers; uneven, but deep when good.
  • IIT Madras — Full NPTEL-style courses including computer organisation and architecture, in English.

Note: Still the rare field where a full graduate lecture series is free on video; start with Mutlu, use Computerphile and Branch Education only to build a mental model before Patterson & Hennessy.

Conference videos, notes & archives

6 resources across 2 groups. Conference recordings are the primary-source tier of video: the speaker is usually an author of the paper, and where a talk exists the proceedings entry is often open at the same link. Every URL here returned 200 on 2026-10-09 unless the note says otherwise.

Architecture has no single conference channel: the symposiums do not publish video, so this is a mix of the two that do and the archives that fill the gap.

Conference channels & video archives

  • Hot Chips — The one architecture symposium that publishes its own recordings; talks by the design teams.
  • CMU 15-418/15-618 — Slides and assignments are open; the lecture videos sit behind an andrew.cmu.edu YouTube login, so plan for slides only.
  • FOSDEM video archive — Hardware, embedded and RISC-V devrooms — the widest free coverage of architecture-adjacent talks.
  • media.ccc.de — Hardware and side-channel tracks, plus the occasional brilliant reverse-engineering talk.
  • USENIX ATC ’26 — Open proceedings; architecture papers here are usually about how hardware behaves under real systems.

Notes, proceedings & paper-adjacent archives

  • No official channel for ISCA, MICRO, HPCA or ASPLOS — Verified on 2026-10-09: @ISCAconf returns 404 and the obvious variants are wrong. Get these talks from the ACM DL, author homepages, or conference sites — not from YouTube.

If you only do three things

  1. Nand2Tetris end to end. Twelve projects, and afterwards nothing in a computer is magic.
  2. Read PicoRV32 (~3000 lines of Verilog), then BOOM. The gap between them is modern microarchitecture.
  3. Agner Fog’s manuals + uops.info. The moment you need real instruction costs, nothing official is as good.

Honest notes

  • Start with RISC-V, not x86. The RISC-V spec is a few hundred readable pages; the Intel SDM is five thousand and assumes you already know the material.
  • The Arm ARM and a core’s TRM are different documents. Confusing them wastes a lot of time.
  • Open silicon is genuinely real now. Yosys + OpenROAD + SKY130 is a complete, free, tapeout-capable flow. That was not true a few years ago.
  • Apple Silicon has the weakest public documentation of any major architecture. The community reverse-engineering work is currently better than the vendor material.