The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of pipelining computer processors. The topic will be covered in general with a focus of some special topics that I found of interest. One area of focus is some of the early criticisms of pipelining and why, in retrospect, they were wrong. I will also cover the emergence and evolution of pipelining in the early IBM line of mainframe computers, including the IBM 7030, better known as the "Stretch" computer. This will be contrasted with the state of pipelining in the current generation of microprocessors from Intel and Motorola.
Library resources used in the preparation of this paper include the Mardigian Library at the University of Michigan at Dearborn , the Kresge Library at Oakland University, the Science and Engineering Library at Wayne State University and the library at Oakland Community College, Orchard Ridge Campus. Additional information was obtained from Intel's World-Wide Web site.
I chose to present the project in hypertext form, specifically, in World-Wide Web (WWW) pages using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). In my opinion, we (the students and teachers of computer related subjects) have been among the last to utilize the resources of the computer. We make faster typewriters with our word processors and automate the process of using the dictionary with spell checkers (sometimes leaving amusing errors when a nonsensical word is spelled correctly). This project attempts to harness more of the power of computers. There are two objectives. The first goal is to produce a series of WWW pages that generates a printed document that is nearly as good as that which could be made with a conventional word processor. The second goal is to produce a dynamic navigable document that is far more than just an electronic copy of the paper document. I hope that in some small way that I have succeeded.
Tony Wesley
Comments to author: tony@tonywesley.com
Last Updated: November 12, 1995