Customer Reviews

The Intel Microprocessors 8086/8088, 80186/80188, 80286, 80386, 80486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro Processor Architecture, Programming, and Inter- facing

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

 

 

I have read the first 140 pages of this book, and I really like it. So far, I have the following comments.
Good points:
1.) It covers both real and protected mode from the start. Other books wait until the middle of the books before they cover protected mode.
2.) Assembly language command mechanism are explained in great detail. The author explain exactly what's going on. How the data moved from memory to register, register to register, how the memory in a computer is organized, how exactly PUSH and POP command works etc. There are lots of diagram that illustrate his explanations.
3.) It covers from 8086 to Pentium II hardware architecture. Many books are strictly limited to outdated 8086 and 8088 processors.
4.) The exercises at the end of each chapter increases my understanding of the subject and answers to even numbered problems are available at the end of the book.

Bad Points:
1.)Assembly language and processor architecture are hard subjects. You have to read each chapter several times before you can get a good grasp of the topic.
2.)Some of the topic presented by the authors can not be easily understood until you read the subsequent chapters.

One suggestion for people who read the book: Make sure you know how to convert binary, hexadecimal and decimal number. You have to know these otherwise you can get lost. Some basic understanding of logic gates is also helpfull!

My teacher used this book in our Electronics Engineering course few year back, it was some old edition. Since then I wanted to buy this book, but I couldn't find it in decent price. Few days back I bought it for US ... (lucky me). This book is really great for Assembly Programmers, Hardware Interfacing (with PCI, Local bus, AGP, LPT and USB), etc. It is also great for leaning Interfacing with other devices too, since it clearly describes some interfacing ICs. It is not suited for beginners.

Has a lot of good background, but if you are looking for in-depth information about the Pentium family, you should likely skip this book. The "Pentium and Pentium Pro" chapter starts page 753, "Pentium II, III and 4" starts page 783, and "Appendixes" star page 802, meaning 30 pages and 19 pages respectively on the last two Intel processor families.

Several references in the book state things like "just introduced" or "this year", but were obviously from early editions.

I recognize how hard it is to keep up to date - The current (as of this writing) architecture documents from Intel on IA-32e and AMD for AMD64 are several thousands of pages and free for download. Of course, I never expected 64 bit architecture discussion in this book, but but I was looking for a narrative that would set the base and context of modern 32 bit implementations.

THIS BOOK IS SUITABLE FOR BEGINNERS IN ASSEMBLY LEVEL PROGRAMMING.IT PROVIDES DETAILED ARCHITECTURE OF ALL INTEL PROCESSORS.I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ALL THOSE WHO WISH TO MASTER ASSEMBLY LEVEL PROGRAMMING.IT IS A GREAT CHOICE OF BUYING THIS BOOK.

It is a great book for anybody who learn intel microprocessor.. It gives detail about the architecture and the command review of intel microprocessor. But if you are fresh from oven to learn microprocessor, please make sure you have more than 1 book and try to understand this book by practice to the microprocessor on your computer.

It's a really Good Book, very thorough. But it lacks editing for the new revisions. There are quite a few chapters that concerns DOS only, and these days it would be hard to find a person that finds this interesting.
Those chapters could very well be exchanged for information on XP, Win 2003 or even Linux. And now I mentioned Linux: this OS is completely ignored in the text. When the author lists the 32 bit operating systems, he event counts Win95 and Win98, but excludes Linux and Unix!?

So: A very nice read that could have been better.

I'm currently studying Electronic Engineering, and this is our recommended text for the introduction to assembly module. I find i can't use the book as it does not lay out any subject clearly. Often parts of the language are used in examples then introduced and explained many pages later. If starting you have to get at least one other book.