When pursuing high-performance code, we inevitably encounter performance bottlenecks. To understand why a piece of code is inefficient and try to improve it, we need to have a basic understanding of how hardware works. We might search for introductory guides on certain architectures, optimization techniques, or read computer science textbooks (e.g., Computer Organization). However, this approach can be too cumbersome and detailed, causing us to get lost in the intricacies and fail to apply our k...