A Programmer's View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from the MIPS RISC Architecture [Hardcover]

James Goodman (Author), Karen Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1993

This introductory text offers a contemporary treatment of computer architecture using assembly and machine language with a focus on software. Students learn how computers work through a clear, generic presentation of a computer architecture; a departure from the traditional focus on a specific architecture. A computer's capabilities are introduced within the context of software, reinforcing the software focus of the text. Designed for computer science majors in an assembly language course, this text uses a top-down approach to the material that enables students to begin programming immediately and to understand the assembly language, the interface between hardware and software. The text includes examples from the MIPS RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture and an accompanying software simulator package simulates a MIPS RISC processor (the software does not require a MIPS processor to run).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Saunders College Publishing (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0030972191
• ISBN-13: 978-0030972195
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,216,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good frosh/soph text on assembly and data representation, March 23, 1998

By 

Stephen Bloch (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Programmer's View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from the MIPS RISC Architecture (Hardcover)

I've used this book for several years to teach an undergrad course introducing CS majors to assembly language and computer representation of data.

The authors have chosen an interesting way to ease the transition from high-level language to assembly: they use several successively more realistic versions of the same (ultimately MIPS) assembly language, all of which run on a simulator provided with the book. The first models a memory-to-memory machine, with typed variables and no registers, allowing students to learn about the minimal arithmetic and control operations (including a limited form of procedure calling) of assembly language without worrying about other concerns. In this context they spend two chapters on integer, floating-point, and character representation. In Chap. 7 they introduce memory addresses, using an array-like syntax familiar to high-level-language programmers, and show how to implement simple data structures. In Chap. 8 they introduce registers and type-specific operations thereon, pointing out that in a load/store architecture like MIPS, all arithmetic actually works on registers. Chap. 9 treats procedures more fully. This constitutes a minimal course; the remaining five chapters can be used as time allows. Chap. 10 discusses assemblers, machine code format, and the "true" MIPS assembly language; chap. 11 discusses I/O, chap. 12 interrupts and exceptions; chap. 13 performance; and chap. 14 other approaches to computer architecture.

I switched to this book when I found Hennessy & Patterson too advanced for my students, and it has served me well. Students are sometimes a little confused about which version of the assembly language we're using at the moment, and I wish the author of the simulator had put in a three-way choice rather than accepting all three languages at once, but I still think the approach works better than throwing the kids in the deep end.