The computing stack

An editorial map, not a required reading order. Linked titles open published articles; other topics are planned.

1. 01

   Foundations

   Mathematical reasoning, units, signals, information, modeling

   Information and representation

   Mathematical reasoning

   Models and abstraction

   Signals and states

   Units and scale

2. 02

   Physics

   Electricity, electromagnetism, quantum basics, thermodynamics, solid-state physics

   Electricity — charge, voltage and current

   Electromagnetism — fields and induction

   Thermodynamics — heat and energy

   Quantum basics — probabilities and energy levels

   Solid-state physics — lattices and energy bands

3. 03

   Chemistry & materials

   Atomic bonding, crystal lattices, silicon, doping, material properties

   Atoms and bonding — from charge to shared electrons

   Crystal structures — cells, sharing and defects

   Material properties — resistivity, geometry and constraints

   Semiconductor doping — donors, acceptors and neutrality

   Silicon and silicon dioxide — structure and composition

4. 04

   Semiconductor manufacturing

   Wafers, photolithography, deposition, etching, implantation, metallization, packaging, testing

   Deposition and etching — growth, transfer and selectivity

   Implantation and annealing — dose, depth and active dopants

   Interconnects and planarization — lines, vias and resistance

   Photolithography — resist polarity, patterns and alignment

   Testing, yield and packaging — count accepted products

   Wafers and process flow — from substrate to patterned stack

5. 05

   Semiconductor devices

   PN junctions, diodes, MOSFETs, CMOS, scaling, leakage

   CMOS — complementary switches and charging energy

   Device scaling — density, energy and performance tradeoffs

   Diode models — bias, exponential current and circuit assumptions

   Leakage and static power — energy while idle

   MOSFETs — gate control, terminal voltages and operating regions

   PN junctions — diffusion, fields and depletion

6. 06

   Electronics & PCB

   Circuit theory, analog and digital electronics, schematics, layout, power, signal integrity, measurement

   Analog and digital interfaces — margins and settling

   Circuit analysis — nodes, loops and loaded dividers

   Measurement and debugging — loading, references and evidence

   PCB layout — geometry, resistance and return paths

   Power and decoupling — regulation, loss and transient charge

   Schematics and connectivity — nets, pins and footprints

   Signal integrity — travel time, reflections and receiver behavior

7. 07

   Integrated circuit design

   RTL, HDL, simulation, verification, synthesis, physical design, timing, ASIC vs FPGA

   ASIC and FPGA — target resources and implementation choices

   Physical design — placement, clocks, routing and extraction

   RTL and hardware description

   Simulation and verification — contracts, checks and coverage

   Static timing analysis

   Synthesis and technology mapping

8. 08

   Digital logic

   Boolean algebra, combinational and sequential logic, FSMs, arithmetic, registers, memory

   Arithmetic logic unit

   Binary adders

   Boolean algebra

   Combinational logic

   Finite-state machines

   Logic gates

   Memory and registers

   Sequential logic

   Synchronous interfaces — valid, ready and backpressure

9. 09

   Computer architecture

   ISA, microarchitecture, pipelines, caches, CPU/GPU, buses, RISC-V, x86-64

   Buses and I/O — transactions, addresses and shared service

   Caches and memory hierarchy — locality, tags and misses

   CPU and GPU parallelism — useful work, bandwidth and overhead

   Instruction execution — fetch, operands and architectural updates

   ISA and microarchitecture — contract, implementation and performance

   Pipelines and hazards — overlap, dependencies and penalties

10. 10

    Firmware & embedded

    Bare metal, boot, MCUs, interrupts, DMA, drivers, RTOS, embedded Linux

    DMA and buffer ownership — addresses, visibility and reuse

    Embedded Linux — boot chain, drivers, root filesystems and updates

    Interrupts and drivers — response, context and shared state

    Microcontrollers and MMIO — peripherals, bits and polling

    Real-time scheduling — ready tasks, deadlines and interference

    Reset and boot — runtime state, images and entry conditions

11. 11

    Operating systems

    Kernel, processes, scheduling, memory, filesystems, syscalls, device drivers, virtualization

    Articles planned
12. 12

    Programming & toolchains

    Assembly, C/C++/Rust, compilers, linkers, ELF, ABI, algorithms, debugging

    Articles planned
13. 13

    Applications & systems

    UI, APIs, networking, databases, concurrency, distributed systems, operations

    Articles planned