Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Third Edition, Revised Reviews

• Very Informative, But Has Many Editing Problems

  
  By A3DQWFWINN3V5A on 2005-03-18
  This is a tough book to review. On one hand, it's got an amazing amount of information in it. On the other, it's got a lot of editing problems. It also suffers from a lack of focus on who its audience is. So, splitting the difference, I'm rating this book at 4 stars out of 5.
  
  Regarding the book's audience, it's vital that you pay attention to the chart on page xiii of the Preface. It maps your path through the book based on whether you're a software-type or a hardware-type. Assuming I was so brilliant that I could ignore such trivia, I attempted to plow my way through the whole book. Software-type that I am, I had some tough times in a couple of sections and then utterly failed to understand anything when I hit the core of Chapter 5. If I had paid attention to that chart, I would have known to skip that part of the book. However, even for the material that's within the path laid out for you by that chart, a lot of the work seems to assume knowledge on the part of the reader. For instance:
  
  - Chapter 2 is about the MIPS assembly language. In the exercises, you're supposed to write various code snippets. Many of these snippets assume far more familiarity with writing entire assembly programs than is presented.
  - The exercises at the end of each chapter are broken into three types: regular, "For More Practice," and "In More Depth." Those last two types require far more knowledge than is presented. It looks like the authors culled them from previous editions and, instead of trashing them, just stuck them on the CD and referenced them.
  - Exercise 3.9 is annotated as requiring Section 3.2. But, unless you're very familiar with the implementation of MIPS assembly language, there's no way that someone using the material in that section alone could do the problem.
  - Exercise 3.13 is annotated as requiring Section 3.3. Yet, the question is completely undoable unless you've at least read Appendix B. Of course, Appendix B, itself, is practically indecipherable unless you've had previous experience/knowledge with Logic Design.
  - Exercises 7.21, 7.22 and 7.38 talk about "the first 1 million references in a trace of gcc." The book contains no definition of what that means. Those questions also mention the cache simulator "dinero" and say, "see the Preface of this book for information on how to obtain them." There's no such information in the Preface or on the CD. The CD does have MipsIt software which includes a cache simulator, but it doesn't seem to work reliably on my XP SP2 system (it also doesn't seem to accept those "traces" as input). That could be operator error, though. Doing a Google search pointed me to max.stanford.edu as a source of the software and traces. But, it seems you have to have a Linux system (or be smarter than me) to use them.
  - Exercise 7.35 gives a C code snippet and asks you to calculate the expected cache miss rate. There's nothing in the book about calculating expected miss rates from algorithms. Also, the exercise is assigned partially against section 7.4. Section 7.4 covers virtual memory, not caches.
  - Most of the Chapter 8 exercises are mis-referenced (i.e., they're labeled as being associated with certain sections of the chapter which have nothing to do with the question). Along with the standard problem of assuming knowledge that's not covered in the book, many of them teach new information instead of testing/re-enforcing comprehension of the provided material.
  
  There are many incorrect page number and section number references in the book. This is especially bad in the exercises where it becomes impossible to do certain ones since the code and data they're referencing isn't findable (at least easily). This problem does seem to get better as you get to the later chapters. There are also problems with basic typography. Some examples:
  
  - Exercise 3.29 wants the reader to come up with a non-restoring division algorithm based on the restoring division algorithm in Figure 3.11 on page 185. The figure and page numbers are right, but the text of the question refers to "step 3b" and "restoring the Remainder" that aren't present there. So, there's no way to figure out what the authors are doing or what they want the reader to do in the exercise.
  - Many of the tables and diagrams in the book use "color" to help indicate something important. Unfortunately, the color used is dark blue. Unless you look very carefully, there's no difference between the regular text/line color (black) and the "emphasized" version.
  - The text description of Figure 7.31 on page 544 mentions labeled sections that show differences in performance based on cache associativity. The labels are missing.
  - Exercise 7.45 gives you a C snippet that you're supposed to document. It contains "!!" as an operator. C has no such operator. My guess is it's either a logical AND, "&&", or a logical OR, "||".
  
  Also, the chapters are WAY too long and there are no exercises following the sections. For instance, Chapter 2 is 100 pages long over 20 sections. All the exercises (59 of them) are clumped together in the back of the chapter. The authors note the necessary section numbers with these exercises, but each section needs its own set of exercises immediately following it. This would also alleviate the problem where the authors have the wrong section numbers assigned to exercises. If these exercises were at the end of a section instead of clumped with 60 other exercises at the back of the chapter, they'd stand out more if they didn't belong.
  
  And, finally, the book needs answers to the questions.
  
  As an aside, this book is used in Florida State University's (FSU) CDA 3101: Computer Organization course.
  
  

• Good information; poor presentation

  
  By A336QE758AE53A on 2006-11-26
  The information contained in this book is sound, and the coverage of a variety of topics is relatively thorough. It is, however, difficult to appreciate these strengths given the numerous flaws in the text. Minor flaws include numerous misleading typographical errors, and too little attention to the flow of information.
  
  The big mistake, though, is the failure to publish a complete book. If you want to learn from this book, then you will need to spend a good bit of time either sitting at a computer reading, or printing out the PDF files on the accompanying CD. The appendices (which are not extraneous, but rather a fundamental part of the text which contain information that's referred to throughout the book) are included ONLY on the accompanying CD. For more than 50% of the review exercises are just references to PDF files. The contents of the CD are not available from the publisher's web site. Do NOT buy a used copy of this book that's missing the accompanying CD. If you like taking books with you to read away from the office, don't buy this book at all. You'll spend too much effort wondering why the printer felt the need to offload a good bit of the printing work onto you. All of this is made even less tolerable by the poor information flow, which will leave you needing to make reference to the appendices many times throughout virtually all other chapters of the book.
  
  It's possible that a future edition may fix these issues. Until then, there have to be better ways to learn.
  
  

• A Miserable Excuse for a Textbook

  
  By A3MW7JJH7TTHO2 on 2006-04-30
  Some reviewers rave about the content of this book, I don't know why. It presents all of its topics at such a highlevel it's almost useless. The authors of this book try to fill some kind of weird intermediate state between a digital logic course and a processor implementation course and fail miserably. The book has not enough detail for either.
  
  The cd-rom, faithfully following the trend of academic textbooks in the US for the past decade, is also completely useless. The most notable things on the cd-rom are: several sections and a chapter from the book, not included in the text, in pdf, and, wait for it... the SPIM mips emulator. Wow, now that is some valuable content [/sarcasm].
  
  Any textbook that doesn't provide answers to the exercise problems deservers a zero in my opinion. I would've given this book a zero, amazon wouldn't let me.
  
  You may be wondering, did I have this book in a course? Did I fail, is that why I'm so bitter? No, I made an A actually, but I sure didn't learn much from this book.
  
  

• Best Book Out there!

  
  By AO4QZYD8QAQDC on 2005-01-11
  If you are a computer scientist or engineer, you must have this book. This book introduces the basic and advanced principles of computing. It gives a good background on computer systems, how it works, how it performs and how to design a system. It teaches the relationship between hardware and low level sofware.
  You might need to have a little background in digital design and little assembly knowlegde.
  
  It is well organized and maintains the reader's attention. It starts with simple and advances through out the chapter. Arithmetic, performance, processor design, pipelining, memory and more advanced topics are covered and explained really well. Especially if you are missing some background in any topic, you can look in to the cd that comes with the book and it has more than enough tutorial. (MIPS, Verilog, Risc architectures etc..).
  
  
  I can say that, its one of the best textbook I have ever had. If you want to advance yourself to next level after reading this book and understanding the concepts, then you should move on to "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" book by the same authors. It covers topics much more in depth.
  
  
  

• Positioned right between hardware and software

  
  By A1M8PP7MLHNBQB on 2004-11-19
  This has become one of the standard text books, and now that it's been updated to the third edition it is even more impressive than before. It's updated to cover the Pentium 4 and has a little bit on the AMD Opteron which is making very strong inroads in the high performance clustered supercomputer business. There's also a fair amount on the MIPS processor. (One of the authors was a cofounder of MIPS.)
  
  This book is aimed at the intersection of the true hardware types and the low level software types. As such, it's guaranteed not to be deep enough in either area to satisfy all. But to the hardware type thinking in bits and discrete logic the programming aspects will be a good help. Likewise to the software type, learning what registers really do, and what's pipelining, will be a great help.
  
  Chapter 9, potentially the most interesting, is on clusters. This chapter is on the CD, not in the book itself.
  
  
• Good technical introduction to computer organization topics
  By ASS47Q4XEF9VH on 2005-03-16
  I use this book as a reference in my technical writing.
  I recommend this book to everyone who have a basic Assembly Language programming background and want to understand everything behind the Machine Language Operation Codes decoding process.
  
  The authors build from scratch (and you learn from scratch):
  
  * How to build a complete Arithmetic and Logic (ALU) Unit
  - Basic Logic Gates processing
  - more advanced topics as Ripple Carry
  
  * How to build a complete Control Unit to guide the ALU Operation
  - Microprogramming vs. Hardwired Control Implementation
  
  * Assembly language examples for programming the Control Unit
  
  It is a good Technical Book in this area.
  
  Complement the study of this book with the Assembly Language Programming presented in the book "The Art of Computing Programming", Volume 1 by Donald Knuth (also, if you need more application examples of low level programming, review Volume 3 "Sorting and Searching"). This is a very good study track.
  
  
  
  
• Terrible book
  By A2S1G53WLP5WDK on 2006-03-23
  This book was used as the primary book for my last college class. The material is poorly laid out and very difficult to follow. Unless you are in your last year of CS or a Engineering student, do not buy this book. I even emailed one of the author's of the book to see if there was any other material available to help better understand the text, and his answer to me was, "you can buy the Advanced book." What a joke.
  
  
• Not very good as a textbook, OK as a reference book
  By A335YAUB8CMNUF on 2006-03-26
  This book is a relatively generous two stars. I have been using this book for a college class and find it to be very poor. The material is not very well-organized. The explanations are often confusing and are generally not very thorough. There are not nearly enough examples, and they are not very helpful when they are there. They put a lot of the book on the CD, which is very annoying. The questions are not very good; they are often confusing or poorly worded and they sometimes cover stuff that is not explained well in the book.
  
  What this book has been useful for, though, is a reference book. I keep it sitting on my desk at work (I am a computer programmer) and refer back to it now and then, especially for MIPS stuff. It is OK as a reference book, which is why I did not rate it 1 star.
  
  In short, I wouldn't recommend trying to learn this material for the first time from this book, as you will probably find the book confusing. However, it may be of some value as a reference, particularly for MIPS architecture and assembly programming.
  
  
• Horrible Book
  By A1FYS18SEUA0A7 on 2007-12-12
  The main problem with this book is that many details are omitted, yet show up in illustrations, examples and problems in the back of the book. Nowhere are these concepts explained, just used.
  
  The writing is dry, which could be forgiven if this were a quality book.
  
  The sections on SPIM do not even come close to showing enough so the reader could actually use it effectively.
  
  Many of the diagrams are too cluttered to be of any use whatsoever.
  
  I would elaborate and write about specific instances of these problems but I have already put more effort into this review as the authors did for the entire book.
  
  
• Another Solid Text From MKP
  By A1Y4ZTB8VMP5PN on 2004-08-22
  This is good book if you are a new student or a seasoned veteran looking for a review.
  
  
• Informative but steep learning curve
  By A23FUBRARK6TZJ on 2006-09-15
  I needed this book for a class, but had not taken assembler yet. by halfway through the course I was so very very lost, I had to drop the class. Well I took Assembler and then retook the class and everything was crystal clear. Do yourself a favor and learn assembler (self or class) before you take computer architecture (or whatever uses this book) or you'll have a much harder time. That being said once you have an idea what's going on this is a very informative book.
  
  
• Disorganized and "uncut"
  By A3G1YXY6BXEX40 on 2007-02-19
  I had to purchase this book for a graduate school course. There is a lot of good information here. Unfortunately lengthy examples and tangents muddy it up pretty badly. Also, I think the author(s) could have safely assumed that readers are familiar with programming; maybe that perspective could have grounded and guided the chapter flow a little better.
  Looking at any 1 section, the writing is good and the explanations are clear for the most part. The catch is that the book as a whole is a collection of enormous disorganized chapters; chapter 2 is almost 100 pages. This work is dire need of editing and some understanding of its intended audience.
  
  
• Not a very good textbook
  By A344I6PZ5YLA4B on 2007-09-17
  The examples are cheesy and the author assumes the reader knows more than what the user has to know in a college course at this level. But if you're already knowedgable of this stuff, this can make, probably a descent reference book. I'll be honest, Hennesy, the author, also wrote the computer architecture, quantitative approach book. This book is lousy. Its like their books are written for decorations. They over complicate everything. Even simple binary add examples are overly complicated, for they use 32 bit words opposed to simple 4 bit words. They're explanations on how they're deriving answers are pretty much useless are non-existence. I'm currently taking a computer architecture couse using this book, and I took the quantitative course in undergrad. Both times I have been sadly disappointed by Hennesy. Unfortunately, he's like the bible writer for these 2 courses. I hope a new more elaborate bible is written in the near future. This guy elaborates on absolutely nothing, and his visual aids are horrible.
  
  
• Great computer science book
  By A1SYLTG5FXLJRR on 2005-09-12
  Using this book in my Computer Architecture & Organization class at Northeastern University in Boston. So far book is great. Really interesting and written by extremely qualified authors. Unlike most books written by authors with such resumes, this book is easy to read and doesn't go straight over the heads of most people reading it for a course. Can't wait to see what we're going to do next.
  
  
• Excellent textbook for understanding how computers work under the hood
  By A1XYU0D436WMNM on 2005-12-15
  In particular, the chapters on pipelining and computer arithmetics are highly recommended.
  
  As a subsequent stage, I would recommend the complimentary of this book, by the same authors - "Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach".
  
  
• Awesome Textbook
  By A1IEFHTCVONS3P on 2006-02-27
  This textbook is up-to-date and awesome. The material it covers is conveyed in such a way that it is easy to underestand. The book chapeters can be read in any order as long as a basic understanding of the material exists. Definitely would recommend this textbook.
  
  
• Well Written
  By A1CZY3TU0JH3O8 on 2006-08-17
  I used this textbook for a computer architecture course, and found it to be extremely well-written, clear, and fun to read. It contains a wealth of information, from a review of logic design to advanced topics such as pipelining. Every component is explained down to the level of gates and flip-flops, leaving no "black boxes," and allowing the reader to thoroughly understand the material.
  
  The book also uses a number of good analogies; for example, memory is compared to books in a library, and pipelining to doing laundry. The pedagogy is excellent.
  
  
  
• strong finite state descriptions
  By AG35NEEFCMQVR on 2005-10-02
  The book strives to closely tie an understanding of source code in a high level language like C back down into its equivalent assembler formulation. The authors chose the MIPS chip as the hardware for the latter assembler.
  
  The approach differs somewhat from the customary hardware text, which usually deals a length with circuitry and assembler. And then, maybe, at its end, it will offer some details about how higher languages get compiled down into that assembler. This text reverses the emphasis. It may address a gap in the CS/EE pedagogy.
  
  The material can be a little involved. Especially when concerning the design of a processor. For this, the book stresses the concept of a finite state machine. It imposes a design discipline that helps debug the control steps.
  
  
• Great Book
  By A3VPZK0G7EJEBI on 2006-03-27
  This textbook is the only reason I passed my Computer Organization class. The chapters can be read out of order or just for reference as I have been doing recently while taking a Computer Architecture class.
  
  I highly recommend this book to anyone in Computer Engineering
  
  
• Must Read - gem of its kind
  By A2QNSETWJA8YVJ on 2008-03-15
  I'm a software developer and avid reader of math and tech books.
  This book is a gem of its kind.
  
  Positives:
  1. Each line in this book has a purpose and you'll definitely learn
  2. The author didn't assume you to be a dumb reader; rather he'll influence you enough to come up with your own computer design.
  3. For any reader, all the questions that could arise from learning each page will be answered sooner or later. I was impressed.
  
  Warning:
  This book uses MIPS instruction set rather than x86 or Pentium instructions. But as I said the author has a purpose for everything - simplicity in this case. Readers looking for a good treatment of x86 architecture should be warned. Readers who are new to the subject should be glad to know that after finishing this book you'll be able make every sense out of Intel's manual and developer's guide.
  
  Happy reading...
  
  
• Poorly organized and has lots of filling material
  By A2NN35H97G2HA5 on 2008-06-01
  The book presents computer architecture around MIPS and supporting hardware organization.
  
  Division of the book into printed material and extra material on CD is a bad choice. One ends up printing the CD material anyway. Especially, it is always good to have a quick digital design review at the beginning of a Computer Organization course. But the review is pushed onto the CD. The authors claim they made this weird choice to keep the the size of the book in check. They could have achieved this easily by adjusting the unnecessarily large typeface used in the book.
  
  They could omit most of their "insight providing" "pits and fallacies" sections. Most of this material can be covered in the standard text. Instead, the authors choose to give common sense arguments a prophetic voice. Along the same lines, they should omit their recurring rant about Intel and how they screwed up the nice RISC architecture the authors helped invent.
  
  The book has editing problems throughout. The diagrams are full of mistakes. There are repeated paragraphs. The text has a poor flow. Some remarks and arguments do not make sense unless the reader is already very familiar with the topic, which is not usually the case for an undergraduate student.
  
  I recommend Parhami's book Computer Architecture: From Microprocessors to Supercomputers (Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering) instead. This book basically has the same material and it does it right.
  
  
• Uneven, intermediate-level qualitative treatment
  By A1DQD2ACZCUNSV on 2008-07-18
  The first few chapters are a bit wasted. If this is your first exposure to computer internals, the material there is densely packed and not so well organized. The authors take a sort of patchy top-down approach to introducing the computer, visiting instructions, high-level languages, compilers, arithmetic, memory addressing, etc. I found a much more coherent and satisfying introduction in Patt's "Introduction to Computing Systems", which starts from transistors and works its way up to C over a whole volume. In all fairness, the authors did include a brief introduction to digital logic in Appendix B.
  
  It's around Chapter 4 that this book really takes off, as the topic shifts to performance and optimization. The explanations are very clear and punctuated with brief, worked-out numerical examples. The discussions of pipelines and memory hierarchy are superb. There are some interesting asides where they compare and contrast the MIPS RISC architecture used throughout the book with Intel's Pentium.
  
  These latter chapters have a certain story-telling quality, with gems of engineering wisdom. It's clear the authors have deep and practical knowledge of their subject. They often revisit the themes of simplicity, measurement and trade-offs as they introduce systems of growing complexity.
  
  
• Great book
  By A2T21ZV7PHQ1TP on 2006-02-21
  This book starts out a little too simple but it quickly picks up pace to a more appropriate level. This is the only book I have ever read that makes assembly code easy to read. This entire book is actually easy to read.
  
  
• Review
  By A16AZWY4AJEO79 on 2006-02-25
  Questions at the end of chapter are hard to understand sometimes. Wording is a bit confusing.
  
  
• Very useful and insight
  By A9PRYCMD79ODX on 2006-10-27
  I took a verilog class that required writing a microprocessor in verilog as a final project. (I also need to create a binary to run on it to prove that it works) I borrowed the 2nd edition of this book from a friend and amazed by how much I learnt from reading only 1 chapter of it. I can finish the microprocessor project in 2 weeks with the help of this book. I am a full-time worker and took the class as part-time. I bought the 3rd edition this January and read it just for fun. This is October and I have 10 more pages to finish the book. It is that good.
  
  
• Nice book
  By A14ZXL4LOEC0ML on 2007-01-03
  This book is one of the better books that I have used for my courses. Even though the subject taught at hand is not trivial this book makes it a lot simpler. Trust me this book is a lot better than some other books I have seen. 500% better than Digital Design by Mano.
  
  
• very good but hated the topic
  By A2385M7YNJGT7 on 2007-01-11
  goes beyond simple digital logic and into more boring technical details like the true calculation of CPU cycle run time - hated the class and my professor almost failed me - make sure you take the right professor with the college course - very time consuming and not fun at all
  
  
• I don't like
  By A3OS7T81V7EBKQ on 2007-06-26
  It's good, but have a lot of errors... so i just don't like.
  But it's not a bad book
  
  
• Good Reference, Easy Reading
  By A1Y6RHRLQ8520T on 2008-01-24
  I like the layout of the book, it works great as a reference, but since I am just beginning my education of computer architecture, I'm actually just reading through it.
  
  The first chapter is bland, covering basic computer knowledge topics, such as how mice work. After that, the book's depth increases dramatically. It give through explanations of compilers and assemblers with ample examples in C and assembly language. There are hints of Java-based examples, but I haven't read far enough to find them yet.
  
  In lab the MIP instruction reference was very handy.
  
  
• Simple, clear introduction
  By A3HKZUUGG5FGE5 on 2008-06-04
  For anyone who wants to know how simple processing and memory works. IO devices chapter was so thin as to be useless, but the main parts of the book were comprehensive.
  
  Used as a textbook in class, but I will keep it as a reference due to high quality and readability.
  
  

• Computer Architecture, Fourth Edition: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)
• Introduction to Algorithms
• Operating System Concepts (7th Edition)
• C Programming Language (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Software)
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (4th Edition)