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

Rating:
Summary: Best Book Out there!
Review: If you are a computer scientist or engineer, you must have this book. This book introduces the basic and advanced principles of computing. It gives a good background on computer systems, how it works, how it performs and how to design a system. It teaches the relationship between hardware and low level sofware.
You might need to have a little background in digital design and little assembly knowlegde.

It is well organized and maintains the reader's attention. It starts with simple and advances through out the chapter. Arithmetic, performance, processor design, pipelining, memory and more advanced topics are covered and explained really well. Especially if you are missing some background in any topic, you can look in to the cd that comes with the book and it has more than enough tutorial. (MIPS, Verilog, Risc architectures etc..).


I can say that, its one of the best textbook I have ever had. If you want to advance yourself to next level after reading this book and understanding the concepts, then you should move on to "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" book by the same authors. It covers topics much more in depth.


Rating:
Summary: Solid Introduction to Computer Organization
Review: This edition seems better organized then the previous. Despite being paperback, it's printed on bright high quality paper. The diagrams are well done, however some of the graphs are poorly colored. It includes a CD, which has its own collection of labs, papers, and software that tie into parts of the book. The CD also contains Chapter 9, Appendices (A-D), and further reading.

The only other gripe I have is the fact that certain advanced topics aren't covered in-depth, since that's beyond the scope and purpose of this book. I would recommend "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" once you're finished digesting chapters 3 through 7.

Rating:
Summary: Positioned right between hardware and software
Review: This has become one of the standard text books, and now that it's been updated to the third edition it is even more impressive than before. It's updated to cover the Pentium 4 and has a little bit on the AMD Opteron which is making very strong inroads in the high performance clustered supercomputer business. There's also a fair amount on the MIPS processor. (One of the authors was a cofounder of MIPS.)

This book is aimed at the intersection of the true hardware types and the low level software types. As such, it's guaranteed not to be deep enough in either area to satisfy all. But to the hardware type thinking in bits and discrete logic the programming aspects will be a good help. Likewise to the software type, learning what registers really do, and what's pipelining, will be a great help.

Chapter 9, potentially the most interesting, is on clusters. This chapter is on the CD, not in the book itself.

Rating:
Summary: Another Solid Text From MKP
Review: This is good book if you are a new student or a seasoned veteran looking for a review.