Customer Reviews

The PowerPC Architecture: A Specification for a New Family of RISC Processors

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

 

 

This book is NOT a design tool. It's not much of anything, as a matter of fact. It resembles a dumbed-down PowerPC data book, and is marginally easier to read, but it contains much less useful information. The text lacks sufficient detail to be implementation oriented. It focuses far too much on programming basics to be considered design oriented. I think perhaps it was intended to serve as an introductory manual for people who don't know how to read data books.

If you're thinking of using this tool in a classroom setting, please don't. There is little or no information in it that can't be obtained FREE by downloading the PowerPC "Programming Environments" data book and the specific data book for your particular processor directly from Motorola.

I read the review from the other reader and I want to give justice to this book. If the person who bought this book is disappointed because s/he was hoping to get something else instead, it has nothing to do with the quality of the current material. A lot of not so positive reviews I read here fall in the same "erroneously bought" critic syndrom. Regarding this book, this is really excellent if you want to go deeper than simply reading the manufacturer's user and programming manuals. I work daily on PowerPC computers implementing low level OS routines and this book does a great job at helping me on using specific instructions. In fact, this material added to the (free) manufacturer manuals and Gary Kacmarcik's book is all one need to work intimately on this wonderful CPU. If you need something at a more generic level, buy J. Hennessey's book.

I would usually not have a written a review for this book, but was taken aback by it's very poor rating. It turned out that this was because of one very poor review which I feel did not do justice to the book, and so I felt compelled to add my opinion.

While many (free) manufacturer supplied data books for various PowerPC implementations have become available since this book was published this is the only PowerPC book that still remains on my shelf. I no longer work on this architecture, but I've found it impossible to give my copy of book away (yes, all the data books are long gone). I find this an excellent introduction to the PowerPC family of processors, and if there are facts about the architecture I need to look up I have always found it here. So, if you don't need a shelf full of data books, and are ready to pay for one hardcover that is almost always good enough, go out and get this one. It's not going to tell you about proprietary implementation details about a specific chip, but if you need to look up something about the PowerPC this should be a great reference.