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Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
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Author: Randal E. Bryant, David R. O'Hallaron
List Price: $108.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 013034074X
Publisher: Prentice Hall (13 August, 2002)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 358,470
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
Bryant and O'Hallaron created a great course
OK, I haven't actually read this book, but I took Bryant and O'Hallaron's course in 1998 (the first semester it was offered, I think) and was a TA for it a year later. They saw the need for a new course for CS undergrads who were coming in and learning C++ and Java without really understanding the guts of the machine. Their course taught things like bit-level representation of numbers (including two's complement and IEEE floating-point), assembly language, virtual memory, memory allocation, caching and its effect on performance, and the basics of TCP/IP. It was a great course--very informative and a lot of fun--and since there was nothing else like it out there, they had to write this book to go along with it.I'm sure the book lives up to the course--and if not, you can rate this review "very unhelpful!" (I did read drafts of the chapters while I was a TA, so I hope I know what I'm talking about!)
Rating: 5 out of 5
I love this book
Have it on my desk since I bought for my computer architecture course (Csci 2021, Univ. of Minnesota - Twin Cities). Such a cool book to learn how computer hardware and software *really* work together, and why finding that out, could make us a more valuable computer scientist/programmer. Also provides a great hand to get you ready for advanced classes like Operating Systems, Compilers. My favorite chapter in the book is about Caches. It's unbelievable to first find out how much cached really matter! Thanks Prof. Bryant and O'Hallaron. I think the first 7 chapters are what the most important to understand and grasp. Rest of the chapters are important too but they usually will overlap with other topics/classes like operating systems. Also, chapter 4 goes in more detail in processor architecure like pipelined CPU and will probably help more to the computer engineer; although computer scientists do learn a lot out of it and will help write code to exploit modern pipelined CPU's, like the deeply pipelined, Pentium 4. But I think the first 7 chapters are the ones, that sets this book aside from the others. You will need access to LINUX, as most of the discussions rotate around it like the virtual address space, assembly code - GAS and so on use the linux implementations. After reading, you will be able tp convert decimal nos to binary and even floating point nos to binary format very easily. You will also learn more about twos complement operations and integer and floating point arithmetic, able to understand assembly code (GAS: GNU Assembler code), how procedures are implemented using stacks array allocation, debugging, embedding assembly code in C programs, more about CPU instruction sets and hardware control language and their implementations, pipelining, optimizing programs and expoliting caches, understanding modern CPU's, various storage technologies, linking, symbol tables, object files, shared object files, and more. Don't forget to visit the book's website before buying the book. It is Here is a brief look about what it is all about!
Chapter 1: A Tour of Computer Systems
Chapter 2: Representing and Manipulating Information
Chapter 3: Machine-Level Representation of Programs
Chapter 4: Processor Architecture [MORE FOR COMPUTER ENGINEERS!]
Chapter 5: Optimizing Program Performance
Chapter 6: The Memory Hierarchy [COOL ONE!]
Chapter 7: Linking
Chapter 8: Exceptional Control Flow
Chapter 9: Measuring Program Execution Time
Chapter 10: Virtual Memory
Chapter 11: System-Level I/O
Chapter 12: Network Programming
Chapter 13: Concurrent Programming
Rating: 5 out of 5
Simply the best computer systems introductory book
This book is just amazing! Not only is it very informative and contains all sorts of usefull information that a programmer should know, it is written in a language that makes it a very fun and easy reading! Get this book now, you will never be disappointed!
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