| | |  | Software Design, Testing & Engineering | Home » » » Computer Organization and Design, Fourth Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) | | | | | | | Description: | | The best-selling computer organization book is thoroughly updated to provide a new focus on the revolutionary change taking place in industry today: the switch from uniprocessor to multicore microprocessors. This new emphasis on parallelism is supported by updates reflecting the newest technologies, with examples highlighting the latest processor designs and benchmarking standards. As with previous editions, a MIPS processor is the core used to present the fundamentals of hardware technologies, assembly language, computer arithmetic, pipelining, memory hierarchies and I/O. Sections on the ARM and x86 architectures are also included. A companion CD provides a toolkit of simulators and compilers along with tutorials for using them, as well as advanced content for further study and a search utility for finding content on the CD and in the printed text.
- Covers the revolutionary change from sequential to parallel computing, with a new chapter on parallelism and sections in every chapter highlighting parallel hardware and software topics.
- Includes a new appendix by the Chief Scientist and the Director of Architecture of NVIDIA covering the emergence and importance of the modern GPU, describing in detail for the first time the highly parallel, highly multithreaded multiprocessor optimized for visual computing.
- Describes a novel approach to measuring multicore performance--the "Roofline model"--with benchmarks and analysis for the AMD Opteron X4, Intel Xeon 5000, Sun UltraSPARC T2, and IBM Cell.
- Includes new content on Flash memory and Virtual Machines.
- Provides a large, stimulating set of new exercises, covering almost 200 pages.
- Features the AMD Opteron X4 and Intel Nehalem as real-world examples throughout the book.
- Updates all processor performance examples using the SPEC CPU2006 suite.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| David A. Patterson | | Paperback:
| 912 pages | | Publisher:
| Morgan Kaufmann | | Publication Date:
| November 10, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0123744938 | | Product Width:
| 1.81 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 2.25 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.03 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.0 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 3.45 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 34 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 34 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 22 found the following review helpful:
 A great book for many audiencesDec 08, 2008
By John Mashey
Iown all 4 editions of this book, plus the 4 published editions (and one preliminary edition) of the related "Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach".
Why?
Because, every time one of these comes out, they become clear standards. The last 20 years have been a period of rapid changes in computing. Fortunately Patterson and Hennessy somehow find time to update their books about every 5 years, not only adding new material, but also improving the pedagogy and readability for different audiences.
This book offers a thoughtful combination of printed and electronic information that potential authors should study, as this combination has evolved across the various iterations.
I especially appreciate the reader's guide (page xvii), which highlights different paths through the book for different audiences. This is very important in books that cover material comprehensively, as not everyone needs to read everything, especially the first time through.
This edition is well worth having, even if one already has the earlier ones. The additional material on multiprocessors is especially crucial, given that uniprocessor performance growth has slowed, and multiprocessor software remains challenging.
I spent many years trying to get people to write software at the highest level possible, but the otherwise-desirable trend in that direction can have one unfortunate side-effect. Some younger software designers have little or no experience with computer architecture and hardware/software interface, and it is all too easy to create performance and scalability surprises that could easily be avoided.
I'd strongly recommend this book to avoid such surprises. Even if a programmer writes in very high level languages, some knowledge of the lower levels and their pitfalls goes a long way.
I used to recommend the other book to people like technology journalists, venture capitalists, and financial analysts, i.e., people who are rarely computer professionals, but need to understand computer technology and its trends. Many such have been surprised to find the book was useful to them.
However, as Patterson and Hennessy have reworked the balance of material between the two books, the more introductory material is located here, whereas the other book is more appropriate for computer designers or software people working close to the hardware.
Hence, the next time someone needs to understand computer technology, well-explained by experts, this is the book I'd recommend.
13 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 The chapter contents were decent, but the problems are horribleAug 28, 2010
By D. George
First I will mention that I had no problem with the actual content presented in the chapters. This was a textbook for my Computer Architecture class, and the figures and presentation were fine. I really like the "pitfalls & fallacies" section of each chapter, as well as the brief sections looking at how real processors apply ideas and looking at the histories of the processors. (Go ARM!)
Now, as I mentioned this was a textbook for my class, and we were often assigned problems at the end of each chapter to do as homework. These problems are the sole reason I give this book a two star. There are so many problems that are very ambiguous as to what they are asking for. Also, I don't mind having multiple parts to a problem, but they went overboard with it. You have one problem with an A and B part, then the next with A-F that you need to perform for both A and B parts of the problem before. It would be MUCH more straightforward just to make all of these sections their own individual program and it would clear up a lot of the confusion that my whole class experienced.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
The best book I have used in computer engineering at UCLAOct 22, 2010
By Rectified^
I'm a fourth year UCLA student studying computer engineering, and by far this has been my favorite text. It appeals both to the programmer and circuits guy in me, as well as the DIYer hardware enthusiast. It covers much of the essential computer architecture theory, but also is well supplemented with real world examples. It emphasizes design tradeoffs that real computer architects must solve. The only thing I don't like about it is the omission of some content from the hard text, but those items are provided via CD.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Don't buy the Kindle versionApr 22, 2011
By Christopher Stoll
The kindle version doesn't come with Appendix C which is the electronic data included on a CD with the paper version of the book, it must have just been cheaper for them to produce it this way.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Kindle Edition's figures are unreadable on 6" Kindle screenJan 20, 2012
By William La Cholter
"William"
I'm reviewing this book for its eBook form.
Computer Organization and Design in Kindle form is hard to read for numerous figures (on a Kindle Touch). Some of the figures are in reverse video. Some need to be zoomed and are already so large relative to the space on a page that there is little scaling. The text flow is OK. The publisher/typesetter should have considered how to rework some of these diagrams for electronic form. Overall, it was a bad decision to buy this in eBook for a class.
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