Computer System Architecture (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

by M. Morris Mano (Author) "The digital computer is a digital system that performs various computational tasks..." (more)
Key Phrases: control address register, logic shift unit, status bit conditions, Englewood Cliffs, New York, Prentice Hall (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Focused primarily on hardware design and organization - and the impact of software on the architecture - this volume first covers the basic organization, design, and programming of a simple digital computer, then explores the separate functional units in detail. FEATURES: *develops an elementary computer to demonstrate by example the organization and design of digital computers. *uses a simple register transfer language to specify various computer operations.

From the Publisher
Focused primarily on hardware design and organization -- and the impact of software on the architecture -- this volume first covers the basic organization, design, and programming of a simple digital computer, then explores the separate functional units in detail.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 524 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 3 edition (October 29, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131755633
• ISBN-13: 978-0131755635
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #112,993 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #22 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Peripherals
  #64 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Design & Architecture
  #78 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Microprocessors & System Design > Computer Design

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The usefulness of a text book often depends on the professor..., February 16, 2006

By	Me "Me" (United States) - See all my reviews

I found this book to be one of the most clearly written texts on the subject of computer architecture(as opposed to the terse, cryptic Astrom and Wittenmark books for control systems, for example.)

Now, a professor can easily test around the basics of any text book by surprising students with unexpected special cases, exceptions, and boundary conditions. But, that is not the fault of the text book itself. If any of those tricks actually appeared in a text book, they would be ignored and he/she would find new ones to test.

Noone can memorize how to think; knowing how to solve the examples in a textbook is only the beginning. That's why there are homework problems.

Unpopular professor tricks aside, I think this is a great book on the topic and it gave me the skills to perform certain assignments on my own during my first engineering job...skills that my employer thought he would have to teach to all us newbies. I was glad I had this book in school.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Caution! This book could hurt your academic career, March 16, 2000

By A Customer

As a student with an perfect record (GPA:4.0)with but a single class to go until graduation, I felt so uncomfortable with this text that I dropped the course. The meandering and lack of technical elaboration was frustrating and confusing. I felt it a shame that any University would approve such garbage. It is enough to make one curious about whether money is being exchanged under the table between the book publishers and schools.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book to learn about the innards of a CPU, October 11, 2003

By A Customer

It's hard for me to believe this book didn't get good reviews. It's an awesome book that succintly details the design of a CPU. The author uses a hands on approach by showing you how to design a simple CPU from scratch. Even though simple, this CPU has a useable set of instructions (including IO ones), interrupts, and a memory subsytem. RTL is used to convey what is done at each instruction cyle, which is great. For me, this is the first time
I see a practical application of RTL. The book could have been more interesting if it provides an implementation in VHDL, or Verilog, but i guess that's left as an excercise for the reader.