29 September 1997 – Subject To Change
xvii
Preface
This manual provides information about the architecture, internal design, external
interface, and specifications of the Digital Semiconductor Alpha 21164PC micropro-
cessor (referred to as the 21164PC) and its associated software.
Audience
This reference manual is for system designers and programmers who use the
21164PC.
Manual Organization
This manual includes the following chapters and appendixes, and an index.
•
Chapter 1, Introduction, introduces the 21164PC and provides an overview of
the Alpha architecture.
•
Chapter 2, Internal Architecture, describes the major hardware functions and the
internal chip architecture. It describes performance measurement facilities, cod-
ing rules, and design examples.
•
Chapter 3, Hardware Interface, lists and describes the external hardware inter-
face signals.
•
Chapter 4, Clocks, Cache, and External Interface, describes the external bus
functions and transactions, lists bus commands, and describes the clock func-
tions.
•
Chapter 5, Internal Processor Registers, lists and describes the 21164PC internal
processor register set.
•
Chapter 6, Privileged Architecture Library Code, describes the privileged archi-
tecture library code (PALcode).