Slightly OT: Computer internals book recommendations

Eric Christopherson echristopherson at gmail.com
Tue Nov 21 13:19:38 CST 2017


Huw Davies wrote:

> Sounds like either
>
> Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by David Patterson and John
> Hennessy
>
> Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface by David
> Patterson and John Hennessy
>
> I see there’s a MIPS edition of the second book. My copy of the second
book
> has Hennessy as the first author.

Thanks. I had the Hennessy/Patterson books on my radar but wasn't sure they
would meet the criteria (haven't been able to find previews of them).

Sophie Haskins wrote:

> I want to say that earlier editions of “Computer Systems: A Programmers
> Perspective” had a bunch of discussions of buses etc in addition to
> assembly, compilers, linking, etc. but the edition I have explicitly calls
> out that they felt like it wasn’t important to have chapters on anymore :(

Sophie also wrote:

> I have the second edition (there appears to now be a third out!) but
> re-reading the preface and "what's changed since the first edition"
doesn't
> seem to say what I remembered re: buses (namely, it says nothing at all).
> It is possibly my professors were referring to a much earlier
> course/textbook (or that I dreamed the whole thing!). CS: APP is still a
> pretty useful book, but...not on this topic, it would seem.
>
> (in the second edition, the only reference to buses is on a page where
they
> note that as of its publishing, buses are much more complicated and much
> less exposed to programmers than they once were)

I have an inside scoop that a certain library is about to get rid of their
2003 printing (which is apparently 1st edition); I've had my eye on it for
a while. It doesn't really go into any detail on buses, but still looks
really useful.

-- 
        Eric Christopherson


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