Computer Architecture, Fourth Edition: A Quantitative Approach

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 704 pages
• Published by: Morgan Kaufmann
• Edition: 4th Edition September 13, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0123704901
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0123704900
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 2.5 pounds

Product Review
If Neil Armstrong offers to give you a tour of the lunar module, or Tiger Woods asks you to go play golf with him, you should do it. When Hennessy and Patterson offer to lead you on a tour of where computer architecture is going, they call it Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th Edition. You need one. Tours leave on the hour.
Robert Colwell, Intel lead designer

The book has been updated so it covers the latest computer architectures like the 64-bit AMD Opteron as well as those from Sun, Intel and other major vendors I highly recommend this book for those learning about computer architecture or those wanting to understand architectures that differ from those they are currently using. It does an great job of
covering most of the major architectural approaches employed today.
William Wong, Electronic Design, November 2006

computer hardware is entering into a new era, what with multicore processing, virtualization and other enhancements Computer Architecture covers these topics and updates the insightful work in the earlier editions that laid out the full range of metrics needed for evaluating processor performance.
Joab Jackson, GCN, November 20, 2006

Book Description
The era of seemingly unlimited growth in processor performance is over: single chip architectures can no longer overcome the performance limitations imposed by the power they consume and the heat they generate. Today, Intel and other semiconductor firms are abandoning the single fast processor model in favor of multi-core microprocessors--chips that combine two or more processors in a single package. In the fourth edition of Computer Architecture, the authors focus on this historic shift, increasing their coverage of multiprocessors and exploring the most effective ways of achieving parallelism as the key to unlocking the power of multiple processor architectures. Additionally, the new edition has expanded and updated coverage of design topics beyond processor performance, including power, reliability, availability, and dependability.

CD System Requirements
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Operating System
This CD can be used under any operating system that includes an HTML browser and a PDF viewer. This includes Windows, Mac OS, and most Linux and Unix systems.

Increased coverage on achieving parallelism with multiprocessors.

Case studies of latest technology from industry including the Sun Niagara Multiprocessor, AMD Opteron, and Pentium 4.

Three review appendices, included in the printed volume, review the basic and intermediate principles the main text relies upon.

Eight reference appendices, collected on the CD, cover a range of topics including specific architectures, embedded systems, application specific processors--some guest authored by subject experts.

Reader Reviews
Computer architecture has seen vast changes in the last twenty years, and fortunately, H&P somehow manage to do a new edition about every 5 years, often enough to stay current. When the First Edition appeared, it quickly became *the* standard textbook on the topic, to be replaced in that role by each successive edition. Computer architectures complexify over time, and so do books. The Third Edition was about 1100 pages long. The Fourth has been shrunk back to something more manageable by moving subsidiary details to a CD included with the book. This edition is well worth having, even if one already has the earlier ones. In particular, the additional material on multiprocessors is especially welcome, given that it has become much more difficult to speed up uniprocessors. Most people who work in or near computer systems architecture know these books, but I have often recommended them to others, such as technology journalists, venture capitalists, and financial analysts, i.e., people who are rarely computer archtiects, but need to understand computer technology and its trends. Many such have been surprised to find the book was useful to them. H&P write very clearly, and each chapter outlines its key concepts for a topic, then works down to detailed analyses, and then comes back up to summarize. hence, I've often recommended to people: 1) Read the first few sections of each chapter. 2) In each remaining section per chapter, read until the going gets heavy, then skip to the next section. In some cases, this will happen after reading the first paragraph, but don't worry, the writing will return to a higher level. 3) Read "Concluding Remarks" and any "Fallacies and Pitfalls" or Historical Perspectives" sections at the end of a chapter. Anyway, I expect this Edition will be just as indispensable as the earlier ones. Comment | | (Report this)