Customer Reviews

Introduction to Assembly Language Programming: For Pentium and RISC Processors (Texts in Computer Science)

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Previously the books on Assembly I have read have been either 100 percent Intel syntax or have been based on DOS Debug, which is pretty antiquated. Reading this book introduced a number of new concepts and was for the most part an enjoyable read. First thing though, this book is designed as a textbook. While the book does cover the basic syntax in Assembly, I feel that it would be a difficult to read for a beginner who has not at least wet their feet in some form of assembly. It is definitely meant to be a book used in a classroom with an experienced facilitator covering the material. Being that it is a textbook, it does have nice exercises at the end of each chapter, if you can get passed the mental block of doing "homework", which are very helpful in understanding the material. The content of the book is very good. A detailed explanation of the different memory models used in the x86-programming model was very informative. I unfortunately did not get passed the Pentium processor programming, but I look forward to going over the MIPS processor when I get a chance and something to develop on.

The Pentium chip dominates the desktop, and this book reflects that. It teaches you the ideas in assembly programming, with a clear emphasis on doing so for the Pentium.

Dandamudi also provides a concise summary of the history of the Pentium, going way back to the 8085 and 8080, around 1982. From these sprang the x86 family. All the way to the 486. But AMD's pesky nipping at the heels caused Intel to lose copyright to "586"; from which Pentium was chosen as the new copyrightable label. Alas, Intel never pushed "Sextium" but instead used "Pentium Pro".

The book has copious examples of assembly code. These are extensively documented inline, to an extent that you will rarely see in most real code. The pedagogy should be clear to most readers. Who are also encouraged to try the problems provided in each chapter. Assembly programming is very different from coding in a higher language like C or Java, and it is a worthy skill to cultivate. And one that is independent of the actual processor family that you code in. If nothing else, the text gives you an underlying qualitative understanding of how higher languages are ultimately expressed in binary executables.

I suppose I should say that there is also some coverage of alternative chip families in the book. Notably some RISC processors. These form a conceptually distinct approach to designing a microprocessor.