I have to second the recommendation for The Pentium Chronicles. I bought that book at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and thought that it looked a

I have to second the recommendation for The Pentium Chronicles. I bought that book at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and thought that it looked a bit overpriced at $35... but it was worth every penny. Robert Colwell tells the story of the P6 architecture with a collection of anecdotes. It's full of insights and easy to digest at the same time. For example, many of the issues in processor design stem from miscommunication about how functional units communicate. Since units on a processor can only communicate with their neighbors, they arranged the teams in the office to reflect the actual die layout. This way, teams responsible for a functional unit could always communicate directly with their on-die neighbors!