Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book on programming aspects of computer systems
Review: A must be book for people who develop system level programs, does application specific computer systems modeling and analysis.
Rating:
Summary: Best guide for anyone wanting to know the "insides"
Review: As my title of this review says, its really about knowing
every system inside out.it uses and brings out the C programming language and how its used to construct operating systems like Solaris, Linux. The author has done a great job! Wonderful read!
Rating:
Summary: Worth its Weight in Gold!
Review: Finally someone has finally written a book that integrates software and hardware. A brilliant holistic approach. This book answered many lingering questions I had from previous classes. I beg professors to have mercy on their students by using this book.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: Have it on my desk since I bought for my computer architecture course (Csci 2021, Univ. of Minnesota - Twin Cities). Such a cool book to learn how computer hardware and software *really* work together, and why finding that out, could make us a more valuable computer scientist/programmer. Also provides a great hand to get you ready for advanced classes like Operating Systems, Compilers. My favorite chapter in the book is about Caches. It's unbelievable to first find out how much cached really matter! Thanks Prof. Bryant and O'Hallaron. I think the first 7 chapters are what the most important to understand and grasp. Rest of the chapters are important too but they usually will overlap with other topics/classes like operating systems. Also, chapter 4 goes in more detail in processor architecure like pipelined CPU and will probably help more to the computer engineer; although computer scientists do learn a lot out of it and will help write code to exploit modern pipelined CPU's, like the deeply pipelined, Pentium 4. But I think the first 7 chapters are the ones, that sets this book aside from the others. You will need access to LINUX, as most of the discussions rotate around it like the virtual address space, assembly code - GAS and so on use the linux implementations. After reading, you will be able tp convert decimal nos to binary and even floating point nos to binary format very easily. You will also learn more about twos complement operations and integer and floating point arithmetic, able to understand assembly code (GAS: GNU Assembler code), how procedures are implemented using stacks array allocation, debugging, embedding assembly code in C programs, more about CPU instruction sets and hardware control language and their implementations, pipelining, optimizing programs and expoliting caches, understanding modern CPU's, various storage technologies, linking, symbol tables, object files, shared object files, and more. Don't forget to visit the book's website before buying the book. It is <http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu> Here is a brief look about what it is all about!
Chapter 1: A Tour of Computer Systems
Chapter 2: Representing and Manipulating Information
Chapter 3: Machine-Level Representation of Programs
Chapter 4: Processor Architecture [MORE FOR COMPUTER ENGINEERS!]
Chapter 5: Optimizing Program Performance
Chapter 6: The Memory Hierarchy [COOL ONE!]
Chapter 7: Linking
Chapter 8: Exceptional Control Flow
Chapter 9: Measuring Program Execution Time
Chapter 10: Virtual Memory
Chapter 11: System-Level I/O
Chapter 12: Network Programming
Chapter 13: Concurrent Programming
Rating:
Summary: Computer Science Must Have
Review: I purchased this book for a class I was taking for my major, Computer Science. I have to say that this is by far one of the best books I have read on Computer Architecture. I am keeping it around for reference on upcoming projects.
Rating:
Summary: Worth its Weight in Gold!
Review: OK, I haven't actually read this book, but I took Bryant and O'Hallaron's course in 1998 (the first semester it was offered, I think) and was a TA for it a year later. They saw the need for a new course for CS undergrads who were coming in and learning C++ and Java without really understanding the guts of the machine. Their course taught things like bit-level representation of numbers (including two's complement and IEEE floating-point), assembly language, virtual memory, memory allocation, caching and its effect on performance, and the basics of TCP/IP. It was a great course--very informative and a lot of fun--and since there was nothing else like it out there, they had to write this book to go along with it. I'm sure the book lives up to the course--and if not, you can rate this review "very unhelpful!" (I did read drafts of the chapters while I was a TA, so I hope I know what I'm talking about!)
Rating:
Summary: Bryant and O'Hallaron created a great course
Review: OK, I haven't actually read this book, but I took Bryant and O'Hallaron's course in 1998 (the first semester it was offered, I think) and was a TA for it a year later. They saw the need for a new course for CS undergrads who were coming in and learning C++ and Java without really understanding the guts of the machine. Their course taught things like bit-level representation of numbers (including two's complement and IEEE floating-point), assembly language, virtual memory, memory allocation, caching and its effect on performance, and the basics of TCP/IP. It was a great course--very informative and a lot of fun--and since there was nothing else like it out there, they had to write this book to go along with it. I'm sure the book lives up to the course--and if not, you can rate this review "very unhelpful!" (I did read drafts of the chapters while I was a TA, so I hope I know what I'm talking about!)
Rating:
Summary: Best book to understand computer systems
Review: The book covers the important aspects of a computer systems.
With the adequate level of depth. Must have book.
Rating:
Summary: it's the shiznit
Review: This book covers everything from basic C programming to IA32 assembly language to the ridiculously mundane IEEE representation of floating point numbers to threads. This is a great resource for engineers who are interested in comprehensive, hands-on, and rigorous understanding of system-level programming.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best computer systems introductory book
Review: This book is just amazing! Not only is it very informative and contains all sorts of usefull information that a programmer should know, it is written in a language that makes it a very fun and easy reading! Get this book now, you will never be disappointed!
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