Computer Systems Organization and Architecture

Computer Systems Organization and Architecture provides up-to-date coverage of fundamental concepts for the design of computers and their subsystems. It presents material with an easy-to-understand writing style that makes it accessible to all readers.

Professor John Carpinelli presents material in this book in the same way he does in his classroom -- by using simple examples to help readers understand concepts without getting bogged down in details. To make the material accessible to beginners, he has included two examples of increasing complexity: the Very Simple CPU which contains four instructions to illustrate very simple CPU design, and the more complex but still Relatively Simple CPU that uses some of the same design techniques and introduces some more advanced techniques as well.

In order to provide an accessible presentation of this important material, this book:

Uses a finite state machine approach to provide a clear understanding of how the CPU performs a sequence of operations to fetch, decode, and execute instructions.
Covers completely the design of computer systems, including memory hierarchies, input/output processing, interrupts and direct memory access, as well as advanced architectural aspects of parallel processing.
Integrates open-ended design problems throughout the book to encourage readers to think through the design process.
Contains extensive examples of real-world components or systems such as the Itanium microprocessor and cache and virtual memory management in Windows computers, and commonly used standards like the IEEE 754 Floating Point Standard and the Universal Serial Bus Standard.
Provides Practically Speaking sidebars to help readers understand why systems are designed the way they are by applying them to real systems.
Includes access to a CPU Simulator, which animates the flow of data within the CPU to give readers a unique insight into how the CPU works.