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Rating: 
Summary: dumb as a sack of hammers, weak as a bag of kittens...
Review: at best, this book is a quick gloss over a small, safe subset of sparc programming. a very pricey quick gloss. at worst, this book is an exercise in futility and frustration. the author's reliance and execessive use on the m4 macro processor is enough to make one walk into oncoming traffic. none of the examples in the book are decipherable without running through the author's library of m4 macro routines - rather, the reader is presented with an indirect representation of sparc assembly that makes concepts hard to learn. the author's misdirected aims of symbolic abstractions are ok in the context of a higher-level programming language, but are absolutely worthless in the context of assembly-level programming. through this book, one is encouraged to program sparc assembly in a high-level manner similar to C - actual pragmatic and real-world assembly programming idioms are nowhere to be found. needless to say, any reader will be sorrowfully disappointed to find that m4 is about as common as leprosy in production environments. i would be beaten like a red-headed step child if i were to incorporate any of the author's practices at work. do yourself a favor and pick up the documentation at sparc.com and leave richard p. paul to nance around with the m4 processor by himself in his more aptly title book "M4, C, and Sparc Architecture"
Rating: 
Summary: This is an excellent book about SPARC Assembly Language.
Review: For anyone interested in learning about the SPARC Architecture/Instruction Set (and RISC machines in general) this book is invaluable. It is especially useful for optimizing iterative and decision making C/C++ constructs. In fact, if one follows the tenets espoused in this book, one can learn to hand optimize time-critical sections of C/C++ code that is better than that produced by gcc or cc - the aversion of the UNIX community to write any code in assembly language notwithstanding. The book really delivers what its rather verbose title implies. That is, a really outstanding feature of the text is the way in which the author translates the standard C/C++ constructs to their low-level counterparts. He does this in stages - creating a variety of examples that progress from functional but grossly inefficient code fragments up to superbly succinct variants. I have used this book in a one semester undergraduate course at the University of Delaware for three years and have also used excerpts from it when I have taught the MIPS Architecture. There is no other book that treats RISC (or CISC) architecture from Professor Paul's relational premise, with which I totally agree. Having taught INTEL stuff for 10+ years, I firmly believe that much of its content could be effectively utilized in CISC courses. The book is also used as the secondary text in the graduate compiler course at U.D. The book is not without flaws, most of which are because of an incredible number of typographical errors - I have counted over 60 just involving commas! Hopefully the new edition which I believe is due to be published soon will have been edited/typeset with more care. Also, there are some minor changes to the gnu software (gdb and gcc) that need to be upgraded.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor in too many respects
Review: For starters, the first apparent detail of this book is the glaring grammatical errors. Ok, no big deal, but still, it's an eyesore. The book is complex for the sake of complexity. Each chapter could easily be 2/3 or less the length it is now. The M4 macro is over-used and under-explained. If it used this much, a whole chapter should be devoted to it (at least more than a four page section covering few basics). The examples are poor and many of them simply don't work. A total lack of explanation as to what is actually going on "behind the scenes" as the macro does its work left me hung out to dry on many occasions. With way too much work, I reaped very little knowledge from this book. I can see this being a half-decent reference for those who have extensive knowledge of the M4 macro and previous experience in assembly language. If you're a beginner, stay miles away from this book. Books on a topic as inherently confusing as this need to be clearer and more extensive in their explanations and have examples that work.
Rating:
Summary: Dense and Confusing
Review: I am a CSCI major, and am currently taking Assembly Language & Architecture. This text was required for the course. After opening it to the first chapter, I was assaulted by a grammatically poor and overall confusing overview of Assembly language...that used an HP Calculator to try and get the idea across. I don't know a single person who actually programs their HP calculator anymore. The remainder of the book does get better, but Tanenbaum explains the concepts a lot better in his Structured Computer Organization. I'd recommend staying away from this book unless it is required for a course, and then only buy it used or borrow it from another sap who actually bought it.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of money
Review: I am sure previous reviewer have some kind of relations with the author. If this book was $15, I would say buy & keep it for reference. But, this is one of the worst books I have ever read and/or studied. If you have no idea about SPARC, it is almost impossible for you to understand or learn anything from this book. If you know fairly, you don't need this book, you can study it by examples by yourself. Do not waste your money.
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't find it that bad, actually
Review: I found the book quite useful as an introduction to SPARC assembly language. There is a lot of material on program optimization, which could be skipped or read. The extensive use of the m4 preprocessor gets slightly annoying at times, but the programs generally remain easy to read. The reason for a four star review is that although I feel the book does not cover the subject in a lot of depth, it wasn't very user-friendly to the absolute beginner either. As such, the book would make a good textbook for a course, but it is not that good for the independent learner. By the way, I'm basing this on the first edition.
Rating:
Summary: Great book to learn Assembly.
Review: This book discusses everything in detail that you need to know in order to learn Assembly and work with assembly. It even discusses and explains Assembly code that does exactly what some of the C Control Structure (for(), while(), etc) code looks like in assembly. This books contains two chapters that discuss different number systems as well as how adding, subtracting, multiplying, and division work with binary numbers including the Assembly code. Any one that wants to have a better grasp of how the machine actually runs your compile program or wants to write/read assembly should get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough to read
Review: This book is the text for a CS course I am taking. Its not easy to read, but neither is assembly language. No doubt, the book makes you dig in and I hate the HP assembly but its a good way to introduce stack machines. I also liked the constant comparisons to C. Bottom line - don't buy unless your ready to work your butt off.
Rating:
Summary: very clear, down-to-earth style
Review: This is one the best books I've read on computing. The presentation is down to earth, as in "here's how a computer do such and such, it's not thaat difficult, see?' which i like very much. It's a complete contrast to Hennesy & Patterson's 'Computer Architecture', which spends most of its pages surveying grand technologies this and that without really getting down to details. If you like to understand & build things yourself rather than admiring other peoples 'technologies', I think you'd like this book. For me, it's also a great place to learn how to write a compiler, because the approach is clear & simple, not overfed with formal-language theory that's the norm in compiler design texts.
Rating:
Summary: very clear, down-to-earth style
Review: This is one the best books I've read on computing. The presentation is down to earth, as in "here's how a computer do such and such, it's not thaat difficult, see?' which i like very much. It's a complete contrast to Hennesy & Patterson's 'Computer Architecture', which spends most of its pages surveying grand technologies this and that without really getting down to details. If you like to understand & build things yourself rather than admiring other peoples 'technologies', I think you'd like this book. For me, it's also a great place to learn how to write a compiler, because the approach is clear & simple, not overfed with formal-language theory that's the norm in compiler design texts.
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