Structured Computer Organization (4th Edition) (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This book takes a modern structured, layered approach to understanding computer systems. It's highly accessible - and it's been thoroughly updated to reflect today's most critical new technologies, including Pentium II and UltraSPARC microprocessors, Windows NT and Java Virtual Machines.Tanenbaum and Goodman present a computer as a series of layers, each one built upon the ones below it, and understandable as a separate entity. The book includes detailed coverage at the digital logic and micro-architecture levels, instruction set level, and operating system machine level, and contains a completely rewritten and updated chapter on parallel computer architecture. This new edition includes a wealth of new material about modern I/O devices, a detailed discussion of the Java Virtual Machine (including a microprogrammed implementation of a subset of a JVM), extensive coverage of multiprocessing, and much more.For all computer professionals and engineers who need an overview or introduction to computer architecture.

From the Publisher

An introduction to those aspects of computer hardware and architecture that affect programming. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 669 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 4th edition (October 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130959901
• ISBN-13: 978-0130959904
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #416,317 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good introduction to the inner workings of a computer, September 19, 2001

By	Todd Ebert (Long Beach California) - See all my reviews

This well-written and often humorous (in the good sense) book is targeted for a freshman or sophomore in computer science or computer engineering. Following a few introductory chapters which give both a historical, conceptual, and structural overview of the computer, Tanenbaum partakes upon a semi-detailed introduction to the various "levels" of a computer, beginning with the digital-logic level (the actual hardware) and working up to both the operating-systems and assembly-language levels.

With respect to the digital-logic level, I thought he did well in introducing the student to the essential components (e.g. registers, ALU, Flip-Flops) without overburdening the student with design techniques such as Karnaugh maps, finite-state machines, etc..

However, by far the best part of the book seemed to be his explanation of the microarchitectural level, in which the relationship between memory, control, and datapath was fully explained. This chapter seemed to be where the "rubber met the road" in terms of showing the connection between programs and hardware. I would have preferred however if he had not introduced the IJVM language so early in this chapter, and had spent more time demonstrating microprograms. I know for a fact that many of my students seemed very confused about the difference between microinstructions and machine instructions.
Moreover, a majority of them found microprogramming with the Mic-1 very difficult if not impossible. More microprogram examples would probably have helped.

Finally, where as the later chapters on instruction sets and assembly language seemed very adequate introductory overviews, the operating-systems level seemed overly broad and of not much use. Certainly, a student should read his other book on OS to fully appreciate this all-too-important aspect of the computer.

In closing, I should mention that the Mic1 software also accompanies this text, and helps provide the student with a well-rounded education, in that they get some hands-on experience. The software and the well-written text make it an irresistable choice to use a first course in computer organization.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great introduction to computer hardware and architecture, October 30, 1999

By A Customer

This is a superb introduction to modern computer architecture and is highly readable. I particularly enjoyed the running examples of the Pentium, UltraSPARC & Java VM, and the chapter on parallel computer architectures. I heartily recommend this to computer programmers who want to gain a fundamental understanding of computer architecture.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Technical. Okay for entry level course, July 15, 2002

By	bobbo (washington, d.c.) - See all my reviews

The text was required for a first year graduate course. A pretty dry read. The chapter exercises were challenging, but they required additional sources on my part (not enough info. in the book) to answer the questions. Most times I had to thoroughly reread sections to even begin to understand some of the material. Not bad, but definitely needed the blanks filled in by the instructor.