From NAND to Tetris: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
From the website:
The official companion web site of Nand2Tetris courses
And of the book The Elements of Computing Systems, MIT Press, By Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken.
The site contains all the software tools and project materials necessary to build a general-purpose computer system from the ground up. We also provide a set of lectures designed to support a typical course on the subject.
The materials are aimed at students, instructors, and self-learners. Everything is free and open-source; as long as you operate in a non-profit educational setting, you are welcome to modify and use our materials as you see fit.
Kris Geusebroek had me musing this morning about static database structures being a legacy of a shortage of CPU cycles. (I Mapreduced a Neo store [Legacy of CPU Shortages?])
What other limitations are due to system design?
This course could start you in the direction of answering that question.