ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the design principles of a superscalar machine. A superscalar processor is a processor that allows the executions of many instructions at the same time, but each instruction operates on only one piece of data. In terms of instruction functions, a superscalar processor is not different from a scalar processor except in speed and complexity. That is, a superscalar processor is able to run much faster because all the operations are performed in parallel. A single instruction multiple data machine contains a vector processor as each instruction can operate on a vector, that is array of data. A Multiple Instruction Multiple Data machine means that many processors are interconnected. One port is connected to the central processing unit while the other is connected to an input/output processor. Note that in a virtual memory system, the processor uses a fully associative translation look-aside buffer that contains the most recently used translation records.
