Can't find a good book on mircroprocessor design

[Lead Butthead]

different variety of ARM processor should be ''mostly'' compatible.
To understand processor design and microcode, you need to know the basics, and most of the older processors, all the way back to 8085 can teach you the basics; how an ALU is strung together with discrete logic, how a ripple adder works, how to overcome the ripple effect are are basic building blocks toward a microcode based processor. Without rudimentary understanding of digital electronics, modern processor design will be quite a leap.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Some basic information and examples with logic gates, that should give some insight. :

Indeed most basic knowledge is important, because then you can see every functional unit as a black box with a function, inputs and outputs but when you "zoom in" at the black box you know what it's inner functions do...


"Ancient" technology :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor–transistor_logic

http://www.ce.uniroma2.it/~lopresti/Didattica/Arch_Calc/ALU_AppB.pdf

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Arithmetic-Logic-Unit.html