Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) 4th Edition

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.

This is a must-read book for students and engineers who want to know how computer works. It covers most of fundamental areas of computer architecture including very recent technologies, such as multicores and mutiprocessors. It gives readers solid framework of computer architecture and guides them to further specific technologies. I was very excited to read the chapter four, The Processor, which describes the complicated concept of processor very easily and step by step. Specially this book provides readers with plenty of examples that help readers understand the topics clearly. I would like to strongly recommend to read this book.

This book was very informative and clear. I had it as an assigned textbook for a class called Computer Organization. I really enjoyed and benefited from the way the book was laid out. Important definitions were easy to find. Examples were used a lot to make each point clear. Using the questions at the end of each chapter was the easiest way for me to study for tests.Every now and then, however, the organization of the book would confuse me, and some of the questions were very poorly worded. I had trouble figuring out what they were asking me to do in some cases. This is certainly one of the better textbooks I've had, but it would've been greatly improved by more available solutions so that students could check their work. Now, that may be my opinion because my professor graded homework for completeness and not correctness and I was struggling to know if all my hard work was done right or not. Either way, some solutions to problems would have been very helpful.

First I will mention that I had no problem with the actual content presented in the chapters. This was a textbook for my Computer Architecture class, and the figures and presentation were fine. I really like the "pitfalls & fallacies" section of each chapter, as well as the brief sections looking at how real processors apply ideas and looking at the histories of the processors. (Go ARM!)Now, as I mentioned this was a textbook for my class, and we were often assigned problems at the end of each chapter to do as homework. These problems are the sole reason I give this book a two star. There are so many problems that are very ambiguous as to what they are asking for. Also, I don't mind having multiple parts to a problem, but they went overboard with it. You have one problem with an A and B part, then the next with A-F that you need to perform for both A and B parts of the problem before. It would be MUCH more straightforward just to make all of these sections their own individual program and it would clear up a lot of the confusion that my whole class experienced.

For learning MIPS assembly, this book is detailed and explains the concepts for why the language and hardware are the way they are. The authors have extremely good credentials, and after reading the book, it's no surprise. There's a great instruction code reference sheet at the front, and there are also some useful appendixes at the back.

This book makes reading about computer architecture very entertaining. The author is enthusiastic and also very knowledgeable about the subject topic. There are great reference pages in the appendices and throughout the book. Very worth it and excellent price.

Computer Organization and Design is an adequate text to teach you fundamentals of computer architecture and covers all the necessary material to have a basic understanding of the subject.That being said, the examples in the text are far too specific and more general examples would have better suited the purposes of this introductory book. If you have just begun to study this subject, you may have difficulty applying the new topics because of the uselessness of the example problems scattered throughout the text.