ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses the characteristics common to the vast majority of computer architectures in use today, as well as most historical architectures since the dawn of modern computing in the 1940s. It is revealed that these architectures may be designed using a hardwired or microprogrammed control unit, using a non-pipelined, pipelined, or superscalar implementation; yet their similarities (as seen by the user) outweigh their differences. The book considers several types of computing systems that are not based on the typical single or parallel processing architectures that perform conventional operations on normal binary data types, but instead have their own characteristics that may render them better suited to certain applications.
