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CPU Design · All levels

CPU Design - Architecture to Silicon

Practical CPU design mastery covering ISA contracts, front-end throughput, out-of-order control, execution datapaths, memory hierarchy, speculation, multicore scaling, and first-silicon closure.

Course promise

This is the execution-focused CPU design course for silicon teams. It teaches how to reason from workload symptoms to microarchitectural mechanisms, then close decisions with artifacts, owners, and regression-safe rollout criteria.

  • Translate CPU architecture concepts into measurable engineering decisions.

  • Diagnose front-end, OoO, memory, speculation, and multicore bottlenecks.

  • Connect architecture choices to timing, power, thermals, and bring-up risk.

  • Use one consistent framework: workload -> mechanism -> artifact -> owner -> decision.

Course map

diagram
ISA and software contract
  -> fetch/decode front-end quality
  -> out-of-order scheduling and retirement
  -> execution-unit and port balance
  -> cache, TLB, and memory hierarchy behavior
  -> branch prediction and speculation control
  -> multicore coherence and interconnect scaling
  -> physical closure, counters, and bring-up

Related topics

Full course index

Every section and lesson in this track — expand folders in the sidebar or jump from here.

Open question bankPractice questions for this track