Current Issues in the Architecture of Microprocessors

Despite the fact that microcomputers have existed commercially for only five years, microcomputer architecture is not an entirely new field. It is, rather, the application of the general principles of computer architecture to microcomputers. In "Planning a Computer System," Frederick P. Brooks Jr. defines computer architecture as being, like other architecture, "the art of determining the needs of the user of the structure and then designing to meet those needs as effectively as possible within economic and technological constraints."¹