Professional Assembly Language

Rating:
Summary: best introductory assembly book ever on linux environment
Review: This book is the best book ever written in introductory assembly language book focusing on linux environment.
The author introduces assembly language on Unix environment using GNU binutils gradually over chapters and leads any novice to understand whole concept of using assembly language easily. Assembly language by nature requires lots of knowledge about hardware (processors) but author's focus on assembly language itself kept properly throughout the book without jumping here an there as the other books on same topic.

As he mentioned in introduction, one of the goals of this book is to help understand programs written in HLA (High Level Language) like C/C++ deeply and find out compiler's inefficiency and correct them to increase performance or provide new functionality. I think his goal is well achieved throughout the book.

If you're working on Linux kernel, this is "MUST READ" book since it uses gas and AT&T style syntax so that it can help a lot to understand and write low-level (boot code) stuffs or in-line assembly to increase performance in Linux kernel.
Even though this book is written only for x86, the same concept can be applied without difficulty to the other architecture. If you're working for the other architecture than x86, this book can still give you very fundamental basic about assembly language programming environment.

Rating:
Summary: For the High Level Programmer Going Low Down
Review: Be aware that this book is very Intel oriented, specifically the 32 bit Intel Pentium family sometimes called X86 or more officially IA-32 (Intel Architecture - 32 Bit). If you're working on a Motorola, Sparc or any other architectured machine, go buy a different book.

Having said that, within the Intel world, this book is an excellent introduction on how the IA-32 architecture has developed over time. It is a good introduction to the basic concepts of assembly language programming. It's a fairly high level book, aimed at the programmer who works in C++ or something like that who might want to optimize his code or at least understand what the compiler did to him.

To go with the book, you probably want to go to the Intel web site and download the Software Developer Manuals for the processor you are using (it's about 12 meg for the Pentium 4) or you can order them on a CD. But start with this book, it provides a basis, a foundation that will make the Intel manuals a lot easier to get around.

Good book to start out with assemblers.

Rating:
Summary: Solid walkthrough of x86 assembler
Review: I do find it odd that in this day and age we are still talking about introductory assembler. But that being said, if you need it you need it, and this is a great place to to get an introduction to the x86 instruction set on the latest processors. Connections with Linux are also demonstrated. Graphics and illustrations are well used but not overused. The text is well written and engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Product for the Linux User Interested in Assembly
Review: I have been searching for a resource to assist me in learning assembly language for a long time. I purchased a couple books but they only focus on linux in a mininmal way. Linux is the primary focus of this book. I have found this book the best assembly book for a linux user to learn assembly.