Customer Reviews

Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who has built a computer or measured its performance recently knows that all but the slowest CPUs spend roughly 90% of their time twiddling their thumbs, checking their wristwatches, waiting on the memory system. The memory system today defines computer-system performance, yet very little is written about it (how does it work? what are the parameters? how to optimize it? etc.). So we wrote this book to address that -- it covers all facets of memory-systems design. Paraphrasing Richard Sites, one of the lead architects of the DEC Alpha processor over a decade ago, memory systems design is the only thing worth focusing on right now ... all else is a waste of time. Hopefully this will help you to build something that rocks; that was our goal.

Minor correction: the book is hardcover, not paperback.

This book is an excellent source that covers system, component and architectures of memory systems and how the total computer memory system is put together into a working system. The coverage of the material is up to date and addresses the critical issues that are facing the present and next generation memory systems being implemented and designed today. The book was well written and is a great source for engineering students and even to a degree non-engineering people. For me, a seasoned engineer, that is relatively new to memory systems, is has been a great source in helping me understand the overall system and how it all works. It also addresses some of the major engineering issues facing todays design that I am presently working on and covers the details of the components to give a good overall understanding of how it all fits together. An excellent overall source to have on hand for any engineer working on memory systems

This is amazing book with everything you need to know about memory systems. It is written in a very clear and organized way. This book is destined to become a classic.

I purchased this book looking for the details of the inner workings of hard disk drive technology, and to my surprise, the book has overcome all my expectatives. Clear explanations, precise language, and a technical detail that it is hard to find on similar books. It is clear to me that the authors know "a little" about what they are writing about ... 100% recommendable.

Because rarely anywhere else you will learn memory systems in such details as they are described in this book. I purchased this book out of pure curiosity to learn memory systems as I have not had much exposure to their either theoretical or practical sides. I started reading the Disk part first, and I couldn't put the book away. The author teaches the structure of disk starting from the physics of ferromagnetism to today's modern applications and trend issues, and advanced topics. I especially loved the Physical and Data layers, Cache layers and SAN applications. I liked the way author organized disk layers separately in each chapter which makes each layer distinct from each other, building up the hierarchy all the way up to the applications. Many illustrations and diagrams help grasp the concepts in general. Each piece, whether it's a read/write head or an spindle motor, that makes up today's modern HDD, is described in this book, how it works, how it was developed over the years and what are being used today. Caches are covered in detail with stressing on overall performance and cost, power dissipation issues and speed, different algorithms to manage cache data and its organization, and many many other interesting concepts related to caches and DRAMs. This is probably one of the most valuable books in my library, and many thanks to the author for making such an incredible job! Any computer scientist or engineer MUST read this book, whether to learn and understand what role memory systems play in today's technologies, or simply to stay updated on the ongoing issues and research in this area. The only little thing I wish author included in this book is about SSD drives as those are being progressively utilized in today's technologies and might have been worth a brief introductory chapter.

This book provides a much needed update from Dick Matick's book written in 1977. To be fair, I have read only the DRAM section. The book is well written. I did not give a 5-star rating because some of the figures were originally in color, and when it was printed as black-and-white ones, it is hard to decipher what corresponds to what. Hopefully, future editions can correct for that.

Based on what I have read through so far, it is superb. I can see it very easily becoming the industry's new reference standard for memory system design. Very well done!