Alpha Architecture

The Alpha Architecture Handbook is an essential technical guide for the Alpha 64-bit load/store RISC architecture. It covers the fundamental design elements, including:

• Basic Architecture: Data formats (byte, word, longword, quadword), floating-point formats (VAX and IEEE), and addressing support.
• Instruction Set: Detailed descriptions of memory, branch, operate, floating-point, and PALcode instructions, with specifics on formats, operations, and exceptions.
• System Architecture: Information on physical address space, coherency, shared memory models, and programming implications for multiprocessor systems.
• PALcode: An explanation of the Privileged Architecture Library, including specific implementation details for OpenVMS, Digital UNIX, and Windows NT.
• Software Considerations: Best practices for code alignment, instruction scheduling, data stream optimizations, and using prefetching to maximize performance.
• Conformance: Guidelines for IEEE floating-point compliance and trap handling.

This handbook includes comprehensive summary tables, instruction definitions, and appendices for architectural and processor identifiers.