The definitive text for understanding the interplay between classic operating system design and hardware performance is "UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel Programmers" by Curt Schimmel, published in 1994.
Concurrency & Locking: Hardware atomic instructions used to acquire and store locks without race conditions. unix systems for modern architectures -1994- pdf
Processes and Threads: Definitions of address space mapping and context switching. The definitive text for understanding the interplay between
While the specific processors (like the original Pentium) are now legacy, the architectural principles Schimmel outlines—concurrency, cache coherence, and synchronization—are the exact same challenges faced by modern Linux and BSD kernel developers today. Mutual Exclusion: The implementation of locks (spin locks,
Mutual Exclusion: The implementation of locks (spin locks, semaphores) to protect shared data.