Customer Reviews

The Essentials of Computer Organization And Architecture

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a teacher, I wasn't too thrilled about yet another computer organization and architecture book. However, this one is different. It is written from a computer science point of view and it aimed at a one semester sequence course. After attending SIGCSE, I was aware of the new Computing Curriculum 2001. This book appears to follow that curriculum, even in the amount of hours recommended per topic.

If you are looking for a computer engineering book, this one probably won't be top on your list. However, the selection of topics for both computer science (and information systems) is perfect. If you are looking for an org/arch reference book, this would be a good candidate.

Strong points: Concise, clear writing style (easy for students to understand); lots of examples; many exercises, at varying levels of difficulty; good breadth for a one course sequence; logical organization; simple "learning" architecture (with simulation software); up-to-date errata (on book web page).

Potential weak points: If you teach more than 2-3 weeks of assembly language programming, you'll have to supplement with a different book; all software is in Java (I don't consider this a weakness, but some people may).

I'm a computer practioneer and know a little about computer hardware, but not much. For the novice reader, this book is great! It is written well, and is thorough in its coverage. I think it's a great reference book (even though it was apparently written as a textbook for teaching) and have used it multiple times in my job already.

I recommend this textbook for those "beginners" who need a good introduction to computer organization and hardware or for those who need a refresher.

I'm in a quandary about how to rate this book. On one hand, it's well written and organized, and definitely follows its charter. From page ix of the Preface, the authors state:

"...we hope to convey the spirit of design used in the development of modern computing systems and what impact this has on computer science students.... Most organization and architecture textbooks present a similar subset of technical information regarding these basics. We, however, pay particular attention to the level at which the information should be covered, and to presenting that information in the context that has relevance for computer science students."

Essentially, the book covers everything a Computer Science (CS) student would need to know (at a fairly high level) about computer systems, their peripherals, and their interconnections. However (and this is the "other hand"), because of their focus on "relevance for computer science students," this book reads more like an extension to a CS "survey" book than it does to a Computer Architecture book.

Though interesting and useful, most of the material (well over 50%, and maybe up to 75%) duplicates material from other courses in a CS degree. To me, every chapter except 4, 5, and 6 resembles summaries of other courses the CS student will take later (actually, chapters 1, 2 and 3 would be from that real "survey" course). Along with the duplication of material, this means that nothing gets covered in depth. Once things get technical, the authors gloss over the details and move on.

Personally, I think that Patterson & Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Third Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) (The ... Series in Computer Architecture and Design) is a much better book for learning Computer Architecture and Organization. That book is definitely hard slogging for CS-types and has quite a few editing and organization rough spots. But, it covers the area well and without duplication. Still, because THIS book is true to its stated aims and is very well written, I have to give it a Very Good 4 stars out of 5 rating (though I'd really like to reduce that to an OK 3 stars out of 5).

I can't say I have read this book cover to cover, but I did examine each chapter and its contents for at least a couple of hours. I am a computer science instructor at a start up university.

First the pros - I will say this book is very well organized in terms of each chapter covering specific aspects about computer science. It gives a good "big picture" view of computer hardware and how it interacts with networking and operating system concepts. If this is what you are looking for, this book is a good one.

Cons - However, I was hoping to find a book that goes beyond digital logic and explaining the architecture within .. bus architectures, how ALU and microprogramming work and so on (i.e., to the level of detail done by the Patterson and Hennessy computer org book - but I don't find their book very organized). This book does have a chapter on this but the material was covered very cursorily. What I found was that this book seems to cover almost half of computer science - down to operating system concepts of memory management and disk access and even data structures and computer networks. I would say that MORE than half of this book is already taught in other subjects that most computer science students generally take. I would see no need (as an instructor) to repeat most of its content to computer science students. However, if I were to target non-computer science students (say .. EE majors looking for an understanding of the hardware-software-network interface within one course), then this would be a good book.

I assign it 3 stars only because it does not suit my purpose as prescribing it as a textbook and what I believe this book should deliver in accordance with its title. However, it is a well written book that many could find very useful.

Well written and nicely organized and structured. It's clear and comprehensive, while still covering a lot of topics. Excellent book for students. Also has an answer and hints section at the end. Students will appreciate it.

I was required to purchase this textbook for a class, but it is still pretty good. The explanations are pretty clear and they do them a few times in a few different ways to help really get the feel for them. Engineering books like this can be fairly boring, but this one mixes in some real world examples and case studies which helps.

The exercises are pretty good, but I wished the answers for at least some of them were offered.

I personally liked this text.
It is not perfect, and some sections should be more elaborated, but otherwise it is rather informative.
Covers boolean algebra, logic gates, memory organization, and many other good things.
It can't be read quickly. You will have to spend time to read carefully.

Positive: for the most part questions for each chapter can be answered based on information in the book. In my life I have encountered text where there were NO way questions could be answered based solely on the info in the text. So, if you getting this text for class, it is good news.

Negative: I feel that some sections could be elaborated more with further examples. For instance binary divisions and multiplications would be better with couple more examples.

I feel like I didn't waste time reading it, so you too could learn something from it (unless of course you already know the subject well...).

I have been using this book for my class for the past several weeks. This book is adequate for my class, though I doubt I will keep this in my collection once I am finished. I think my main gripe with the book is that it provides lengthy examples for tasks that were very easy to understand, yet it glosses over the examples that were very hard to comprehend.

One of the parts was how they gave about 4 or 5 examples in converting numbers to different bases, when the steps are virtually identical, yet they don't have any examples of IEEE 574 (floating point) conversions, even though floating point covers an entire section of the book.

This is hit and miss. I will use it, but this book will not be added to my collection of school books that I have kept when I finish a course.

I used this book for a course in Computer Architecture. Except for one chapter, I read the entire book and I practiced almost all the exercises. As a novice reader, I liked the book very much. The book is very well organized, chapters are laid out in logical sequence and the writing style is very clear. Many illustrations are presented in the book that make it easy to understand concepts. Many examples are presented in special cases that help the student understand complicated stuff. Overall I am very much pleased with this book. The only reason I give it four stars instead of five is because the answers to the exercises listed at the back of the book had errors in them (I confirmed this fact after checking with my instructor) and these are not fixed even in the last edition. Highly recommended to those who are new to this topic.

I recently used this book for a course and agree with the reviews that it is easy to read and very concise. It provides a wide scope of computer architectures and covers these well. However, I did find it frustrating at times that it provided too cursory a coverage of the computer organization pertaining to memory. This was especially prevalent in its discussion of caching and virtual addressing. It did not provide enough technical discussion or indepth examples although the illustrations were excellent.