Customer Reviews

The Complete PCI Express Reference: Design Implications for Hardware and Software Developers (Engineer to Engineer series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book a few week ago. It is horrible.
There are so many mistakes I sincerely doubt the book has
gone through an editorial review or more than
a cursory reread by the authors. Typos, obvious cut and paste
errors, bad diagrams. The presentation of the material is also
very poor. In explaining various topics it makes uses of many
terms and concepts before they are even defined.

The book is also extremely repetitive in that
it reintroduces the same concepts over and over again. At first
I would reread paragraphs to determine if I had missed
something new in what appeared to be repetitive. After wasting
too much time I now just move on. The book could have been much
more succinct and concise. Instead it is very tedious and discouraging. The numerous errors leave the reader second
guessing his or her understanding of chapters previouly read.

I am a designer by trade and there is no way I would
design anything using this text as a reference. Intel press
has miserably failed in screening this book from publication.

This book provides much more information than the specification. I know one of the engineers that wrote the specification and I for his sake I hate to admit that this book does a much better job. When I use the specification I have to look at all pages in the specification to find all information on each topic. This book has done this work by grouping into chapters these topics and adding design information. It saved me weeks of design work and it helped me understand the specification. I do have to admit that without the book I don't think I would have understood the specification.

This is absolute must have book for any hardware or software engineer working on PCI Express. It has excellent detailed block diagrams, many tables, and extensive flowcharts which are very useful engineering aids. It appears all are beyond the specification and not simply a copy of the specification. It is very well rewritten and removes the guess work of what the specification was defining and provides the details the specification should have provided. It appears that Intel printed this book in addition to their introduction book to provide a single source for complete information and appears to have provided the authors with inside information. This book is so complete in protocol and architecture one does not even need to get the specification for these topics. The error and link state chapters and general architecture are excellent and far beyond anything in the specification. The book does provide an overview of the mechanical and the electrical waveforms for component devices, but refers to the specification for details of these topics. A friend who was technical reviewer of this book lent me electronic files of this book as a favor and I found it so useful I ordered a hardcopy.

Numerous typos, wrong diagrams and flow charts, obvious cut & paste errors. The online errata doesn't come close to identifying all of the errors.

I have just finished my second successful design using this book and once again it was extremely helpful. Of tremendous help are the chapters relating to processing the transaction packets, physical packets and link packets. Only this book goes in great detail with a fresh engineering approach. It also has a great chapter on error processing. In fact all of these chapters far exceeds any information in the specification. Another part of the book is the most detailed next state tables that again is actually more complete that the specification. Basically I am so impressed by this book because it saved me a lot of design time and it prevented me from going down the wrong road in understanding the specification.
In this second design I also looked at other books another team member bought and found them limited, only this book goes into full detail plus provide insight into the design. The other books spend a lot of time restating the specification in similar words and fgures, but provide no more details. Anyone that that is really doing design work will see that book is the only one that provides very clear and far more detailed design information. In talking with a friend of mine at Intel's Folsom site, this book is considered the most complete and accurate. Anyone with the PCI Express specification can see this book really provides the details missing inthe specifcation. In addition, posted recently at the Intel web site is a tie-in tutorial which helped some people on my team to get up speed very quickly. It seems that the any typos or changes to the book due to recent changes in the specifications are being updated on a monthly basis at the Intel web site.

I have been using this book as reference for most of the time and i prefer this one compared to the latest release.This is targetted for designers mainly..

I am using this book and I am very happy with it. I noticed that the PCI SIG last Christmas begun posting a lot if ECNs and other corrections to the base specification. I check the Intel press website about twice a month (this month I was buying another Intel press book) and noticed that the PCI SIG ECNs and other corrections have been integrated into an update to the Complete PCI Express Reference book. I downloaded the update and found that the authors actually went line by line in the book and provided the new information on any page that was affected by the confusing stuff from the PCI SIG. The big difference is that the update to the book is NOT confusing and indeed unravels all of the key information hidden in the PCI SIG information.

I have been using this book for three months in my contracting work with Intel. I am very impressed by the depth of design help and factual useful information in this book. I also noticed last week that the Intel press website that maintains the updates for this book has added the information for the NEXT REVISION (Rev 1.1 or 2.0) of the PCI Express specification. It appears that the authors and Intel have been busy creating a page by page update to the current book to address the engineering change orders and errata from the PCI special interest group. I found it impossible to track the errata and engineering change orders on the PCI special interest group website. This update of the book did a great job in taking the information from the PCI special interest group and I guess ADVANCE INFORMATION for the next revision internal to Intel and linking it to the current edition of the book. I also have let a couple of the other design consultants working with me borrow the book and they ended up buying their own copies. They also found that it helped them avoid many misunderstandings from reading the specification. They also found the PCI special interest group website's errata and engineering updates incomplete and hard to follow. They agree with me that the update information on the Intel press website that maintains the update is a great help ... which is why I decided to take the time to write this review.

As an experienced hardware engineer first at HP and now with a startup, I read all the other reviews for this and other books with an interest in getting more information than what is in the specification. I decided to buy this Intel book. This book has all the inside information in more detail as noted in the other reviews. Most importantly it took the time to explain all complex issues in the specification with straight forward and clear discussions. Most importantly it broke down the complexity of the complex flow control information and how to calculate the credits in to straight forward discussiosns. It retained the more detailed design engineering facts and figures from the specification and went beyond each topic with additonal information that are very useful. In addition the features observed in the other reviews I found the details for the architecture of the Root Complex, switch, and the endpoints very useful. The specification was very weak on these details and it not should not have been. I used two previous books by this author for PCI and ISA designs and these books were also the best available and still are. I also like the on going Intel based web site that posts updates to the book due to specification changes. The way the specification changes are done and posted done by the PCISIG is impossible to follow. The updates to the book that reflect they changes to the specification are much easier to follow. I only wish they were posted more quickly.