- Introduction
The Machine
A computer is built from one part repeated: a switch that is either on or off, a scrap of doped silicon that conducts only when told to. These chapters stack that switch into logic, logic into arithmetic and memory, and all of it into a processor that runs a program held in its own memory, then ask how a machine that large is described, made faster by overlap, caching, and many cores at once, and even configured after it is built.