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Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th Edition 4th Edition

by John L. Hennessy (Author), David A. Patterson (Author)

4.5 67 ratings

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Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)
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The era of seemingly unlimited growth in processor performance is over: single chip architectures can no longer overcome the performance limitations imposed by the power they consume and the heat they generate. Today, Intel and other semiconductor firms are abandoning the single fast processor model in favor of multi-core microprocessors--chips that combine two or more processors in a single package. In the fourth edition of Computer Architecture, the authors focus on this historic shift, increasing their coverage of multiprocessors and exploring the most effective ways of achieving parallelism as the key to unlocking the power of multiple processor architectures. Additionally, the new edition has expanded and updated coverage of design topics beyond processor performance, including power, reliability, availability, and dependability.

Increased coverage on achieving parallelism with multiprocessors.
Case studies of latest technology from industry including the Sun Niagara Multiprocessor, AMD Opteron, and Pentium 4.
Three review appendices, included in the printed volume, review the basic and intermediate principles the main text relies upon.

Review

“If Neil Armstrong offers to give you a tour of the lunar module, or Tiger Woods asks you to go play golf with him, you should do it. When Hennessy and Patterson offer to lead you on a tour of where computer architecture is going, they call it Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th Edition. You need one. Tours leave on the hour. --Robert Colwell, Intel lead designer

“The book has been updated so it covers the latest computer architectures like the 64-bit AMD Opteron as well as those from Sun, Intel and other major vendors ... I highly recommend this book for those learning about computer architecture or those wanting to understand architectures that differ from those they are currently using. It does an excellent job of covering most of the major architectural approaches employed today. --William Wong, Electronic Design, November 2006

“Computer hardware is entering into a new era, what with multicore processing, virtualization and other enhancements … Computer Architecture covers these topics and updates the insightful work in the earlier editions that laid out the full range of metrics needed for evaluating processor performance. --Joab Jackson, GCN, November 20, 2006

Review

The best-selling computer architecture book redefines the field with each new edition

About the Author

ACM named John L. Hennessy a recipient of the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. John L. Hennessy is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1977 and was, from 2000 to 2016, its tenth President. Prof. Hennessy is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM; a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science, and the American Philosophical Society; and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many awards are the 2001 Eckert-Mauchly Award for his contributions to RISC technology, the 2001 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, and the 2000 John von Neumann Award, which he shared with David Patterson. He has also received seven honorary doctorates.

David Patterson is the Pardee Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, which he joined after graduating from UCLA in 1977.His teaching has been honored by the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, the Karlstrom Award from ACM, and the Mulligan Education Medal and Undergraduate Teaching Award from IEEE. Prof. Patterson received the IEEE Technical Achievement Award and the ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award for contributions to RISC, and he shared the IEEE Johnson Information Storage Award for contributions to RAID. He also shared the IEEE John von Neumann Medal and the C & C Prize with John Hennessy. Like his co-author, Prof. Patterson is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Computer History Museum, ACM, and IEEE, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He served on the Information Technology Advisory Committee to the U.S. President, as chair of the CS division in the Berkeley EECS department, as chair of the Computing Research Association, and as President of ACM. This record led to Distinguished Service Awards from ACM, CRA, and SIGARCH.

ISBN-10

0123704901
ISBN-13

978-0123704900
Edition

4th
Publisher

Morgan Kaufmann
Publication date

September 27, 2006
Language

English
Dimensions

7.5 x 1 x 9 inches
Print length

704 pages
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John L. Hennessy
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PATTERSON HENNESSY
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Morgan Kaufmann; 4th edition (September 27, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 704 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0123704901
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0123704900
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.44 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #705,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #70 in Computer Programming Logic
- #182 in Computer Hardware Design & Architecture
- #31,638 in Unknown

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4.5 67 ratings

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John L. Hennessy
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John Leroy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is an American computer scientist, academician, and businessman. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. as well as Atheros and is the tenth President of Stanford University. Marc Andreessen called him "the godfather of Silicon Valley".
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Eric Chan [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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4.5 out of 5

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Mike D

Great book, but in need of a new edition

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2011

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I'm using this book for a graduate course in Computer System Design. It's a great book, well put together, and very interesting. What is needed is a new edition. This book was written during the days of the single core processor speed wars around 2005. Since then there was the core war (2 cores, 4 cores, 6 cores on desktop computer systems), and today the explosion in technical advances with mobile devices. A year ago it was the speed war up to the 1 GHz mark, and today mobile hand-held devices are being released with 1 GHz dual-core processors, and even announcements of quad core mobile devices by the end of the year. It's a much different world than it was in the Pentium 4 days. The information, equations, etc are spot on, as this is the bible for this information. But reading a book that often references 6-7 year old technologies as current or up and coming, at times it feel more like reading a well written history book. It would be interesting to see references and discussions on the computer architectures in modern mobile devices, as these pocket sized computer systems are increasingly becoming a part of everyone's lives today.

7 people found this helpful

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M. Zaleski

Excellent deep-dive into processor architecture

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2009

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This book isn't for the timid. It goes deep into several recent CPU designs and explains why the architectures turned out the way they did. There is decent coverage of RISC versus CISC ideas, and why CISC now dominates (hint: it is a combination of luck, marketing, and massive amounts of available transistors, plus new ways of instruction-level parallelism).

It does not cover the absolute latest processors. But it doesn't have to. It will give you the background needed that when you go to the website that have technical details of a new architecture (e.g. Ars Technica), chances are good you will know the concepts they reference.

Who shouldn't buy this: Programmer's in high level languages expecting to learn some black magic way to speed up your code. Even assembly language programmers have been mostly sidelined by the power of a modern CPU to optimize high-level languages.

2 people found this helpful

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L.I.T.

The bible... Nothing like others.

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2010

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For those who have never read this book, I'd emphasize that this is not a computer architecture book that explains some basic stuffs. Instead, this book focuses more on the performance aspect of the computers and I'd say this is the ONLY worthwhile book that discusses from that viewpoint. So, if you are to study the computer performance, your choice is either reading this book or reading tons of papers published by researchers or both. It means you must have a good understanding on the computer architecture before reading this book.

My only complaint is that though the book is available only with paperback now, they didn't reduce the price. It's still worth the price, though.

4 people found this helpful

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M. Ogleari

Very good Computer Arcthiecture textbook

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2019

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This is an older edition, but I can't think of any better textbook for learning computer architecture.

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2013

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I have purchased this book as a textbook for a college course. I have been satisfied with the depth and organization of the book.
I think it provided great information for a person who needs understanding of computer architecture .

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2010

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I have been trying to return this book because a get confused and i didn't need this book. Can you tell me where i can send back the book please?

Though this book is really good.

Thank you.

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Rick

Difficult Material to learn

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2009

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I've used this book for an Advanced Computer Architecture book in my graduate studies (it seems so has every other graduate course, which has an added bonus).

The book falls in line with most educational books - mediocre at best. The samples are weak and seldom useful. This book is best coupled with classes and online material found via search engine of your choice.

Many universities take the slides and adapt them to their curriculum and post materials accessible online which may be useful.

There are some errors in the book and I have yet to track down the errata (even though they provide a link to a place to find it, seems to be only for professors? Not quite sure what that is about...)

I'm a bit biased, I thought learning about RAID systems, cache optimization, memory optimization, etc - would have been a bit more interesting and challenging. I've mostly found it dull, ancient, and redundant (Zing!).

7 people found this helpful

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triwood

but good to have one while you are studying high performance ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2016

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it's old. but good to have one while you are studying high performance computing..

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Arthik Raj B Jain

Satisfied with the seller

Reviewed in India on August 31, 2021

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The packaging was really good was bubble wrapped. IT IS THE BEST BOOK FOR THE SUBJECT

Binta

sehr gut

Reviewed in Germany on September 19, 2015

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Sehr gutes Zeug. Gerne mal wieder!!!
Entspricht meine Anforderungen.
Preis Leistung-Qualität = sehr gut.
bin echt zufrieden damit und kann nur empfehlen

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ludo

Ouvrage de reference

Reviewed in France on December 31, 2010

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Un ouvrage de reference à avoir dans ca bibliothèque pour tout ceux qui s'intéresse à la performance.
les divers sujet sur le fonctionnement des architecture y sont abordé (optimisation, fonctionnement du pipeline,...).
Excellent investissement.

One person found this helpful

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AMM

A must have

Reviewed in Japan on December 25, 2013

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For a computer architect it is a must have.

A. Kovaleski

the classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 27, 2007

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This book is now in its 4th edition and remains the benchmark text in its field. I have had the 2nd edition for some time and must admit that the 4th edition is not as easy to follow as it covers a huge amount of new and advanced material.

Anyone requiring a gentler introduction should take a look at Jon Stokes' Inside The Machine. It covers much of the same material but with rather less rigor.

The key word in the title is Quantitative, there are no 'hand-waving' arguments in this text. Highly recommended but not for the faint-hearted.

17 people found this helpful

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