Customer Reviews

Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction

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The book is a great introduction to system design issues that are only taught at few courses in few universities. even-though they show up in computer systems everywhere. This is a very good and easy read for any one in computer industry . it describes all parts of computer systems and how they interact very well. The extension of the book is online and many chapters are available for free to download.
The chapter on Naming is worth the money of the book. I have not seen the discussion of naming in such detail and simple terms anywhere,
The authors are very well respected professors at MIT and have experience in operating systems and computer system since its early days.
I highly recommend this book to any hardware or software student or professional engnineer.

The book is not organized well. While the goal is to teach abstractions, too few and well thought out examples bring the abstractions back down to real world situations, thus the intrinsic value of an abstraction is not conveyed.
There are also significant typos in the exercises that make some unsolvable. The order of events are reversed in some of these exercises, wherein the whole point of the exercise is lost and there is no answer.