Customer Reviews

Computer Organization, Design, and Architecture, Fourth Edition

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I took a two-semester course on Assembly Language Programming, Digital Logic, and Computer Architecture and this book was amazing. We covered the basics of digital logic (binary, octal, and hexadecimal arithmetic, 1s and 2s complement, Boolean algebra, combinational logic, etc.) the first semester so by the time we got to this book in the second semester, we skipped the first two chapters and most of the third and went straight into adders and flip-flops.

The author discusses the organization of A Simple Computer (ASC), but given what little time we had, we were tasked with building a Very Simple Computer (VSC), a primitive 8-bit computer (5-bit memory, 3-bit opcode) capable of performing basic arithmetic. We read just the chapters on combinational circuits, synchronous sequential circuits, organization & programming, hardware design, and memory.

The point is that we only used about half the material in the book and we were able to build an 8-bit computer from TTL chips. If you read the thing cover to cover, you'd be able to build a 16- or 32-bit machine no problem. It was a ton of fun and this book was an absolute lifesaver. Together, the book and course fundamentally changed the way I look at computers and I have a much better understanding of how they operate and what's inside them.