Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Third Edition, Revised
 

Related Products













Product Lists

Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Third Edition, Revised

by Morgan Kaufmann

$64.95
buy from amazon.com
Average Rating: * * * * -
Sales Rank:12292 (lower is better)
Price Used:$42.99
Shipping:Free Shipping on most orders over $25*
Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Label:Morgan Kaufmann
Pages:621
Binding:Paperback
Publication Date:2007-06-01
Published By:Morgan Kaufmann
ASIN:0123706068
Category:Book

Authors

Editorial Reviews and Product Descriptions

Product Description

Whats New in the Third Edition, Revised Printing

The same great book gets better! This revised printing features all of the original content along with these additional features:

Appendix A (Assemblers, Linkers, and the SPIM Simulator) has been moved from the CD-ROM into the printed book

Corrections and bug fixes

Third Edition features

New pedagogical features

Understanding Program Performance
- Analyzes key performance issues from the programmers perspective
Check Yourself Questions
- Helps students assess their understanding of key points of a section
Computers In the Real World
- Illustrates the diversity of applications of computing technology beyond traditional desktop and servers
For More Practice
- Provides students with additional problems they can tackle
In More Depth
- Presents new information and challenging exercises for the advanced student

New reference features

Highlighted glossary terms and definitions appear on the book page, as bold-faced entries in the index, and as a separate and searchable reference on the CD.
A complete index of the material in the book and on the CD appears in the printed index and the CD includes a fully searchable version of the same index.
Historical Perspectives and Further Readings have been updated and expanded to include the history of software R&D.
CD-Library provides materials collected from the web which directly support the text.


In addition to thoroughly updating every aspect of the text to reflect the most current computing technology, the third edition

Uses standard 32-bit MIPS 32 as the primary teaching ISA.
Presents the assembler-to-HLL translations in both C and Java.
Highlights the latest developments in architecture in Real Stuff sections:
- Intel IA-32
- Power PC 604
- Googles PC cluster
- Pentium P4
- SPEC CPU2000 benchmark suite for processors
- SPEC Web99 benchmark for web servers
- EEMBC benchmark for embedded systems
- AMD Opteron memory hierarchy
- AMD vs. 1A-64

New support for distinct course goals

Many of the adopters who have used our book throughout its two editions are refining their courses with a greater hardware or software focus. We have provided new material to support these course goals:

New material to support a Hardware Focus

Using logic design conventions
Designing with hardware description languages
Advanced pipelining
Designing with FPGAs
HDL simulators and tutorials
Xilinx CAD tools

New material to support a Software Focus

How compilers work
How to optimize compilers
How to implement object oriented languages
MIPS simulator and tutorial
History sections on programming languages, compilers, operating systems and databases


On the CD

NEW: Search function to search for content on both the CD-ROM and the printed text
CD-Bars: Full length sections that are introduced in the book and presented on the CD
CD-Appendixes: Appendices B-D
CD-Library: Materials collected from the web which directly support the text
CD-Exercises: For More Practice provides exercises and solutions for self-study
In More Depth presents new information and challenging exercises for the advanced or curious student
Glossary: Terms that are defined in the text are collected in this searchable reference
Further Reading: References are organized by the chapter they support
Software: HDL simulators, MIPS simulators, and FPGA design tools
Tutorials: SPIM, Verilog, and VHDL
Additional Support: Processor Models, Labs, Homeworks, Index covering the book and CD contents

Instructor Support

Instructor support provided on textbooks.elsevier.com:

Solutions to all the exercises
Figures from the book in a number of formats
Lecture slides prepared by the authors and other instructors
Lecture notes

Customer Reviews

Uneven, intermediate-level qualitative treatment - Reviewed on 2008-07-18
* * *

The first few chapters are a bit wasted. If this is your first exposure to computer internals, the material there is densely packed and not so well organized. The authors take a sort of patchy top-down approach to introducing the computer, visiting instructions, high-level languages, compilers, arithmetic, memory addressing, etc. I found a much more coherent and satisfying introduction in Patt's "Introduction to Computing Systems", which starts from transistors and works its way up to C over a whole volume. In all fairness, the authors did include a brief introduction to digital logic in Appendix B.

It's around Chapter 4 that this book really takes off, as the topic shifts to performance and optimization. The explanations are very clear and punctuated with brief, worked-out numerical examples. The discussions of pipelines and memory hierarchy are superb. There are some interesting asides where they compare and contrast the MIPS RISC architecture used throughout the book with Intel's Pentium.

These latter chapters have a certain story-telling quality, with gems of engineering wisdom. It's clear the authors have deep and practical knowledge of their subject. They often revisit the themes of simplicity, measurement and trade-offs as they introduce systems of growing complexity.
Simple, clear introduction - Reviewed on 2008-06-04
* * * * *

For anyone who wants to know how simple processing and memory works. IO devices chapter was so thin as to be useless, but the main parts of the book were comprehensive.

Used as a textbook in class, but I will keep it as a reference due to high quality and readability.
Poorly organized and has lots of filling material - Reviewed on 2008-06-01
* * *

The book presents computer architecture around MIPS and supporting hardware organization.

Division of the book into printed material and extra material on CD is a bad choice. One ends up printing the CD material anyway. Especially, it is always good to have a quick digital design review at the beginning of a Computer Organization course. But the review is pushed onto the CD. The authors claim they made this weird choice to keep the the size of the book in check. They could have achieved this easily by adjusting the unnecessarily large typeface used in the book.

They could omit most of their "insight providing" "pits and fallacies" sections. Most of this material can be covered in the standard text. Instead, the authors choose to give common sense arguments a prophetic voice. Along the same lines, they should omit their recurring rant about Intel and how they screwed up the nice RISC architecture the authors helped invent.

The book has editing problems throughout. The diagrams are full of mistakes. There are repeated paragraphs. The text has a poor flow. Some remarks and arguments do not make sense unless the reader is already very familiar with the topic, which is not usually the case for an undergraduate student.

I recommend Parhami's book Computer Architecture: From Microprocessors to Supercomputers (Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering) instead. This book basically has the same material and it does it right.
Must Read - gem of its kind - Reviewed on 2008-03-15
* * * * *
1 customer found this review helpful.

I'm a software developer and avid reader of math and tech books.
This book is a gem of its kind.

Positives:
1. Each line in this book has a purpose and you'll definitely learn
2. The author didn't assume you to be a dumb reader; rather he'll influence you enough to come up with your own computer design.
3. For any reader, all the questions that could arise from learning each page will be answered sooner or later. I was impressed.

Warning:
This book uses MIPS instruction set rather than x86 or Pentium instructions. But as I said the author has a purpose for everything - simplicity in this case. Readers looking for a good treatment of x86 architecture should be warned. Readers who are new to the subject should be glad to know that after finishing this book you'll be able make every sense out of Intel's manual and developer's guide.

Happy reading...
Good Reference, Easy Reading - Reviewed on 2008-01-24
* * * * *
2 customers found this review not to be helpful.
I like the layout of the book, it works great as a reference, but since I am just beginning my education of computer architecture, I'm actually just reading through it.

The first chapter is bland, covering basic computer knowledge topics, such as how mice work. After that, the book's depth increases dramatically. It give through explanations of compilers and assemblers with ample examples in C and assembly language. There are hints of Java-based examples, but I haven't read far enough to find them yet.

In lab the MIP instruction reference was very handy.
Read More Customer Reviews »
Go To Amazon Product Page

* - See Amazon Product Page for shipping and pricing details.


Book Subjects