| Computer Organization and Design, Fourth Edition, Fourth Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) | 
 enlarge | Authors: David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Category: Book
List Price: $89.95
Buy New: $70.86
You Save: $19.09 (21%)
Buy New/Used from $58.33
Avg. Customer Rating:   (1 reviews)
Sales Rank: 619
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 912
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0123744938
Dewey Decimal Number: 004
EAN: 9780123744937
ASIN: 0123744938
Publication Date: October 31, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The classic textbook for computer systems analysis and design, Computer Organization and Design, has been thoroughly updated to provide a new focus on the revolutionary change taking place in industry today: the switch from uniprocessor to multicore microprocessors. This new emphasis on parallelism is supported by updates reflecting the newest technologies with examples highlighting the latest processor designs, benchmarking standards, languages and tools. As with previous editions, a MIPS processor is the core used to present the fundamentals of hardware technologies, assembly language, computer arithmetic, pipelining, memory hierarchies and I/O. Along with its increased coverage of parallelism, this new edition offers new content on Flash memory and virtual machines as well as a new and important appendix written by industry experts covering the emergence and importance of the modern GPU (graphics processing unit), the highly parallel, highly multithreaded multiprocessor optimized for visual computing.
A new exercise paradigm allows instructors to reconfigure the 600 exercises included in the book to easily generate new exercises and solutions of their own.
A CD provides a toolkit of simulators and compilers along with tutorials for using them as well as additional problems and solutions, and references.
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| Customer Reviews:
A great book for many audiences December 8, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Iown all 4 editions of this book, plus the 4 published editions (and one preliminary edition) of the related "Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach".
Why?
Because, every time one of these comes out, they become clear standards. The last 20 years have been a period of rapid changes in computing. Fortunately Patterson and Hennessy somehow find time to update their books about every 5 years, not only adding new material, but also improving the pedagogy and readability for different audiences.
This book offers a thoughtful combination of printed and electronic information that potential authors should study, as this combination has evolved across the various iterations.
I especially appreciate the reader's guide (page xvii), which highlights different paths through the book for different audiences. This is very important in books that cover material comprehensively, as not everyone needs to read everything, especially the first time through.
This edition is well worth having, even if one already has the earlier ones. The additional material on multiprocessors is especially crucial, given that uniprocessor performance growth has slowed, and multiprocessor software remains challenging.
I spent many years trying to get people to write software at the highest level possible, but the otherwise-desirable trend in that direction can have one unfortunate side-effect. Some younger software designers have little or no experience with computer architecture and hardware/software interface, and it is all too easy to create performance and scalability surprises that could easily be avoided.
I'd strongly recommend this book to avoid such surprises. Even if a programmer writes in very high level languages, some knowledge of the lower levels and their pitfalls goes a long way.
I used to recommend the other book to people like technology journalists, venture capitalists, and financial analysts, i.e., people who are rarely computer professionals, but need to understand computer technology and its trends. Many such have been surprised to find the book was useful to them.
However, as Patterson and Hennessy have reworked the balance of material between the two books, the more introductory material is located here, whereas the other book is more appropriate for computer designers or software people working close to the hardware.
Hence, the next time someone needs to understand computer technology, well-explained by experts, this is the book I'd recommend.
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