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Title: Computer Organization and Design Second Edition : The Hardware/Software Interface by David Patterson, John Hennessy ISBN: 1-55860-428-6 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $84.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.65 (46 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Depth and Breadth, both served with a smile
Comment: I am a CS major and recently studied this book in the computer architecture course. The book does not presume prior logic design or assembly language experience. The writing style is quite lively, unlike the dry tone of most science authors. The book is a good mix of theory and history, and has a distinctive 'Fallacies and Pitfalls' section at the end of each chapter that lays to rest the common misconceptions and ill-practices pertaining to the topic of that chapter. The authors are quite well known in the computer design field and anything they say is authoritative and current. Unlike many other books on computer design and architecture, the authors follow a unified approach and build a RISC machine chapter by chapter, introducing new concepts gradually and thoroughly. The detail is remarkable, and the authors have favoured explaining in depth a particular, simple architecture rather than going for a sort of a survey of all the prevalent famous architectures. I found this to be very useful in understanding the basic concepts. Nevertheless, there is a 'Real Stuff' section at the end of most chapters to give one a flavour of full-blown, real-world computer architectures. The diagrams in the book progress from simple to very detailed for a particular portion of the architecture. The chapter on assembly language of MIPS is also very good. Some reviewers have complained about the progressive style of the book, whereby the authors continuously refine an idea. I found it helpful on the first read, as it takes you gradually to the final design. I am sure if they had not done this, students would then have complained about the book being too difficult. However, the book *is* verbose in places. Also, it would have been better to use more headings and other visual aids to categorise and demarcate topics. The exercises are pretty good and the complaint about the examples not having enough mathematics is really not valid, as that is the level of *mathematics* applicable to computer architecture. Overall, an interesting book that I enjoyed and benefitted from a lot.
Rating: 4
Summary: Why teachers like this book (and students may too)
Comment: Some may wonder why so many teachers, in Universities, Colleges and elsewhere, have selected this textbook among so many other choices.
First, this book presents an authoritative introduction on a popular type of architecture: the MIPS architecture. As the basis for the Pentium class of systems, one can hardly avoid a good coverage of MIPS in a Computer Architecture and Design class. Secondly, the authors have taken great pains to indicate common fallacies and pitfalls as well as "real-world" examples (even though they may be slightly outdated since the writing of this book in 1995). Thirdly the book is fairly comprehensive in breadth, if not always in depth.
This brings us to the real reason this textbook enjoys popularity among teachers: flexibility. Teachers often use a textbook not as a reference, but as an aide in teaching. Usually this means that the exercises, presentation and diagrams are helpful in covering a particular topic. Patterson and Hennessy provide the essentials of MIPS architecture while leaving enough room for teachers to use their own methods of presentation and emphasis. Since the book makes use of logic design but does not require it as a prerequisite (while giving a very good high-level overview in Appendix B), students from a variety of background (hardware or software) can make use of this book without being held back. A teacher may choose to cover logic design in parallel, or seperately, put more emphasis on pipelining or glossing over it, and either offer an extensive coverage of MIPS assembly or ignore it altogether This effectively allows for a wide berth in teaching possibilities.
What's in it for the student? Pay careful attention to your teacher's lecture! (But you know this already) Use this book for its excellent diagrams and for its explanations if you need to understand a particular concept in more details. Use it to do the exercises of course. In the rare event that you understood completely the lecture the first time, do not hesitate to skip ahead to find "Final" diagrams and summary tables.
A note on P&H's incremental method: while it may initially present some difficulty for a reader accustomed to receiving ready-made answers, it is an excellent way of understanding the design process which is inherently incremental in scope and functionality. When studying a series of diagrams (such as 5.19-5.24 or 6.31-6.35), visualize the intermediary figures as stills of a picture. The entire sequence of figures may be played in "fast-forward" to see the evolution of a design or the activities along the instruction datapath. The last figure in such a sequence may then better understood and appreciated.
Last but not least, do not hesitate to read and consult other references such as Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization, MIPS reference docs available online and MIPS design companies websites. Do not forget what a Computer Architecture and Design class is all about: learning to design your own architecture one day in the real world!
Rating: 2
Summary: Very boring and tedious to read!!
Comment: This book has a good potential in teaching students about computer organization. Unfortunately, the authors spend too much time explaining simple concepts which makes the book very boring and tedious to read. For example: the authors spend 335 pages just to explain basic MIPS assembly languages and computer performance. Those concepts could have been explained in 50 pages at most. Giving too much unnecessary detail won't help me to get a better understanding of computer organization. In fact, I get lost because the main topic was buried inside all the unimportant unnecessary details. This book could have been written in 300 pages, which is about a third of the length of the book, and still gives a clear, to the point, concise explanation of computer organization.
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Title: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson, David Goldberg ISBN: 1558605967 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub. Date: 15 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $89.95 |
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Title: Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz, Greg Gagne, Peter Baer Galvin ISBN: 0471250600 Publisher: Wiley Text Books Pub. Date: 08 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $95.95 |
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Title: Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein ISBN: 0262032937 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
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Title: Mandatory Package: Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications by Kenneth H Rosen ISBN: 0072930330 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $126.40 |
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Title: Modern Operating Systems (2nd Edition) by Andrew Tanenbaum ISBN: 0130313580 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 28 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $100.00 |
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