Book Resources Overview

Structured Computer Organization
Fourth Edition

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
With contributions from James R. Goodman

Structured Computer Organization is the fourth edition of this best-selling introduction to computer hardware and architecture. It has been heavily revised to reflect the latest changes in the rapidly changing computer industry. Professor Tanenbaum has maintained his popular method of presenting the computer as a hierarchy of levels, each with a well-defined function. The book is written in a style and level of detail that covers all the major areas, but is still accessible to a broad range of readers.

After an introductory chapter and a chapter about system organization (processors, memories, and I/O devices), we come to the core of the book: chapters on the digital logic level, the microarchitecture level, the instruction set architecture level, the operating system level, and the assembly language level. Finally, there is a chapter on the increasingly important topic of parallel computer architectures.

New to this edition:

• The running examples throughout the book are now the Pentium II, Sun UltraSPARC II, and Java Virtual Machine, inlcuding Sun's hardware Java chip that implements JVM
  
  
• The input/output devices discussed in the computer systems organization chapter have been updated to emphasize modern technology such as RAID disks, CD-recordables, DVD, and color printers
  
  
• Modern computer buses, such as the PCI bus and USB bus have been added to the digital logic level.
  
  
• The microarchitecture level has been completely rewritten and updated as follows:
  • The detailed microprogrammed machine example illustrating data path control is now based on a subset of the Java Virtual Machine

  • Design cost and performance tradeoffs are illustrated with a series of detailed examples culminating with the Mic-4 example that uses a seven-stage pipeline to introduce how modern computers such as the Pentium II work

  • A new section on improving performance focuses on the most recent techniques such as caching, branch prediction, out-of-order execution, and speculative execution
  
  
  
• The instruction architecture level covers machine language using the new running examples.
  
  
• The operating system level includes examples for the Pentium II (Windows NT) and the UltraSPARC II (UNIX).
  
  
• New material on dynamic linking has been added to the assembly language level .
  
  
• The parallel computer architecture chapter has been completely rewritten and expanded to include a detailed treatment of multiprocessors (UMA, NUMA, and COMA), and multicomputers (MPP and COW).
  
  
• All code examples have been rewritten in Java.

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