This book is intended for computer engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering students with some background in digital logic and programming. The book covers all aspects of computer architecture, including instruction set design, multiprocessors, and pipelined organizations. The result is a textbook that is useful as an introduction to computer organization fundamentals, but not detailed enough to be the only textbook for a two-semester course.
After a succinct historical evolution of computer architecture and performance evaluation fundamentals in chapter 1, chapter 2 is devoted to the design of an instruction set architecture. It follows a bottom-up development scheme, describing memory addresses, instruction cycles, addressing modes, and instruction types, in that order. The organization of this chapter is similar to that of other well-known textbooks [1].
The next abstraction level is the assembly language. Chapter 3 introduces a hypothetical computer architecture and registers, to describe instruction mnemonics and their translation to machine language. The chapter ends with a brief description of the main characteristics of the Intel x86 family of processors. The x86 architecture is presented in two pages, including special-purpose registers, relative addressing modes, and some examples of use. The description then goes from the 8086 to the Pentium I processor: there are no references to any processor after 1993. No reasons for this omission are given, making the reader wonder if the authors decided that a description of new models would be too complex at this point.
Chapter 4 describes the fundamentals of computer arithmetic. Both integer and floating-point standards are covered, plus some circuit implementations for arithmetic operations. One of the most complex issues in computer architecture is central processing unit (CPU) design. Chapter 5 is devoted to this subject, providing an overview of different classic datapath design alternatives. An introduction to hardwired and microprogramming control units is also given.
Chapter 6 discusses the memory system design, providing some insights on cache architecture, and some updated real-world examples, such as the Pentium IV and PowerPC cache subsystems. Chapter 7 completes the study, with details on main memory design and virtual memory. An overview of input/output (I/O) design and organization is given in chapter 8, together with some real-world examples of interrupt design.
The last three chapters cover more advanced issues. Chapter 9 addresses pipelining design techniques, including how to avoid pipeline stalls using branch precomputing, instruction reordering, and prefetching. The chapter ends with some words on instruction-level parallelism and arithmetic pipelines. Reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architectures are currently a major topic in computer architecture. RISC machines have not only been a commercial success, but have also introduced a new approach to teaching this subject, mostly because of the wide acceptance of Hennessy and Patterson’s excellent textbooks [2,3]. Chapter 10 discusses the main properties of RISC machines, comparing them with complex instruction set computer (CISC) machines. Some examples of RISC architectures, both academic and commercial, are provided. Finally, chapter 11 is devoted to multiprocessors, including classifications of parallel computer architectures, a discussion of shared- and distributed-memory organization, and a few words on interconnecting networks.
Covering all these topics in about 250 pages makes the writing necessarily succinct. The result is a digest of computer architecture, but, in my opinion, one without enough detail to be used as the only textbook in a two-semester course. There are some other minor drawbacks, such as the lack of solutions to selected exercises, an indication of their complexity, or a description of the bibliography references at the end of each chapter. The price is also high for a book with these characteristics, but it is edited very well.
