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Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

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Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#71

Post by hashtag-til »

Eddygandr wrote: post #69
hashtag-til wrote: post #3

Does anyone know/recommend the author? Sometimes I feel Packt books are not the highest quality. Happy for anyone to disagree and tell me a different impression. I was reached out by Packt a few times on LinkedIn with something like: "hey, if you want to write about stuff, let us know".

I got asked to write a book by Packt as a lead author with two years experience in a junior position. This was a (badly) paid role of like 800 GBP or something. Take from that what you will...

Yeah, I was similarly approached (on LinkedIn) to write a book on a topic I'm nowhere near an expert nor vocal about it in social media, etc.

I'm not really in social media at all, so I take the approach as a cold-call for writing a book, which seems like a red flag to me.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#72

Post by sn9 »

billfruit wrote: post #66
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #9

IMO, the best textbooks for computer architecture and organisation are Computer Organisation and Design and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach , both by Patterson and Hennessy. The former book even comes in a variety of assembly languages, including MIPS, ARMv8 (or a subset, called LEGv8, heh), and RISC-V.

Also a good option for those whose main interests are on the software side is "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective" by Randal Bryant and others.

CSAPP is a good prereq for the OP's recommendations if you want an ordering.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#73

Post by zahllos »

unethical_ban wrote: post #59
zahllos wrote: post #10

Better option: Computer Organization and Design by Patterson and Hennessy, ISBN 978-0124077263. Comes in MIPS (original version now in its 5th edition), ARM and RISC-V focused flavors, covers "instructions unique to architecture X" as part of its discussion.

The description on the official site says the target is grad students. Is it fair to say that is not an introduction to the subject?

It depends what you mean or want by way of introduction. Are you interested at all in how your CPU does what it does and why, or were you interested in the "learn x86, ARM and RISC-V" tag-line that was originally on the book title. Do you imagine you will read this book and be writing all your software in assembler straight after? That won't happen, most likely - if you want that and insist you do, I'd suggest the flatassembler forums.

The COD book I recommended was recommended to me by an EE undergrad who took it on one of their courses, and I think it is suitable as an introduction to how computers actually work, with plenty of real-world examples and mentions of architecture features that indicate specific tradeoffs. Of course, whether that is suitable is really going to depend on the person reading it.

The Packt book looks like it might be attempting to do the same thing - except I am slightly worried it likely digresses a bit into virtualization, self driving cars and quantum computers (based on the Packt TOC and github repo). I'm going to say this is scope creep - I don't know how deep it goes into virtualization, but personally I think understanding how x86 does virtualization is much less useful than understanding the wider problem of how to partition hardware. If it doesn't say LPAR somewhere in there or discuss mainframes, I'd be disappointed. Self-driving cars do not, in my opinion, belong in a book on how modern computers work, and I'm not sure the author's experiments with IBM's quantum computer cloud thingabob are really what I want out of such a book either.

That said, I've not read the Packt book and I can't say anything about the earlier content. I have read the COD book - but I wish I'd come across it earlier than I did. Still, I got something out of it.

Some graduate textbooks are highly specialized and for niche fields - my formal education is in mathematics and I can definitely say this about some graduate maths books - but this is not one of them. I think it is widely applicable to anyone who a) wants an introduction to how computers do their stuff or b) already broadly knows, but has some gaps and wants to fill them in.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#74

Post by bogomipz »

lambdas wrote: post #4

Have packt got any better? I’ve always steered clear as they seem to publish anything, regardless of quality.

No they have not. There is the odd book and author that are quality but it seems to be the exception. You can almost always guarantee:

The formatting is atrocious. You will regularly get blurry and illegible images for things like terminal screen shots or else just regular text on a white page that is supposed to be terminal output.

Books often to appear to have not been proof read.

There are regularly pages that have one or two sentences on them. Presumably this is done in order to pad the book length.

As a company they are pure garbage. There is probably no way any independent publisher can put out that volume of books and maintain any level of quality. I believe their business model is simply to flood search results with their titles. In a given year they will put many titles on the exact same subject or tech stack.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#75

Post by kens »

pengaru wrote: post #65
kens wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an (unpaid) technical reviewer for a Packt book on Arduino back in 2012. After a couple of chapters I realized that the book made little sense and was mostly plagiarized. It took more effort and conflict than I liked to convince Packt that this was a problem and couldn't merely be fixed by editing. I definitely would not be a Packt reviewer again.

What's the incentive for donating your time in such a role? Name on the cover?

Helping the community...

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#76

Post by lostmsu »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #61
lostmsu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does RISC-V version include GPU? I am more inclined for ARM version since that's applicable to both all current Apple hardware and school Chromebooks.

The ISA doesn't really matter (at least, not between MIPS, ARMv8, and RISC-V) when you're first diving into computer organisation. That's why one book can be sold with three different ISAs. The overarching concepts are mostly the same: you have digital logic, IEEE-754, basic assembly (add, sub, and, not, xor, load, store, shift), pipelining and hazards, caches. Only afterwards do the differences between the ISAs come…

It matters for engagement, e.g. if you can actually run examples painlessly.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#77

Post by snvzz »

lostmsu wrote: post #76
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISA doesn't really matter (at least, not between MIPS, ARMv8, and RISC-V) when you're first diving into computer organisation. That's why one book can be sold with three different ISAs. The overarching concepts are mostly the same: you have digital logic, IEEE-754, basic assembly (add, sub, and, not, xor, load, store, shift), pipelining and hazards, caches. Only afterwards do the differences between the ISAs come…

It matters for engagement, e.g. if you can actually run examples painlessly.

The open standard ISA RISC-V has the advantage there, with open source hardware implementations (like C906 and C910) and good tooling and simulators.

RISC-V is rapidly building the strongest ecosystem.

Re: Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)

#78

Post by unethical_ban »

zahllos wrote: post #73
unethical_ban wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The description on the official site says the target is grad students. Is it fair to say that is not an introduction to the subject?

It depends what you mean or want by way of introduction. Are you interested at all in how your CPU does what it does and why, or were you interested in the "learn x86, ARM and RISC-V" tag-line that was originally on the book title. Do you imagine you will read this book and be writing all your software in assembler straight after? That won't happen, most likely - if you want that and insist you do, I'd suggest the fl…

Thanks for the recommendation. I bought the book.

And FWIW the book you recommended is for undergrads and is a much more accessible read, according to the authors. I saw "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" and got confused.

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