Computer Organization and Design

Book excerpt: This best selling text on computer organization has been thoroughly updated to reflect the newest technologies. Examples highlight the latest processor designs, benchmarking standards, languages and tools. As with previous editions, a MIPs processor is the core used to present the fundamentals of hardware technologies at work in a computer system. The book presents an entire MIPS instruction set—instruction by instruction—the fundamentals of assembly language, computer arithmetic, pipelining, memory hierarchies and I/O. A new aspect of the third edition is the explicit connection between program performance and CPU performance. The authors show how hardware and software components--such as the specific algorithm, programming language, compiler, ISA and processor implementation--impact program performance. Throughout the book a new feature focusing on program performance describes how to search for bottlenecks and improve performance in various parts of the system. The book digs deeper into the hardware/software interface, presenting a complete view of the function of the programming language and compiler--crucial for understanding computer organization. A CD provides a toolkit of simulators and compilers along with tutorials for using them. For instructor resources click on the grey "companion site" button found on the right side of this page.This new edition represents a major revision. New to this edition:* Entire Text has been updated to reflect new technology* 70% new exercises.* Includes a CD loaded with software, projects and exercises to support courses using a number of tools * A new interior design presents defined terms in the margin for quick reference * A new feature, "Understanding Program Performance" focuses on performance from the programmer's perspective * Two sets of exercises and solutions, "For More Practice" and "In More Depth," are included on the CD * "Check Yourself" questions help students check their understanding of major concepts * "Computers In the Real World" feature illustrates the diversity of uses for information technology *More detail below...