This is the authoritative reference on Digital Equipment Corporation's new 64-bit RISC Alpha architecture. Written by the designers of the internal Digital specifications, this book contains complete descriptions of the common architecture required for all implementations and the interfaces required to support the OSF/1 and OpenVMS operating systems.

Common Architecture; Basic Architecture; Instruction Formats; Instruction Descriptions; System Architecture and Programming Implications; Common PALcode Architecture; Console Subsystem Overview; Input/Output; Architected System Interface; OpenVMS Alpha Software: Introduction to OpenVMS on Alpha; OpenVMS PALcode Descriptions; Memory Management; Process Structure; Internal Processor Registers; Exceptions, Interrupts, and Machine Checks; DEC OSF/1 Alpha Software: Introduction; PALcode Instruction Descriptions; Memory Management; Process Structure; Exceptions and Interrupts; Appendix A: Software Considerations; Appendix B: IEEE Floating-Point Conformance; Appendix C: Instruction Encodings