A revised printing for this book will be available in June 2007!

What's New in the Third Edition, Revised Printing

The same great book gets better! The revised printing features all of the original content along with these additional features:

. Appendix A (Assemblers, Linkers, and the SPIM Simulator) has been moved from the CD-ROM into the printed book

. Corrections and bug fixes

Click here to request a desk copy of the revised printing!

About the Third Edition

In addition to thoroughly updating every aspect of the text to reflect the most current computing technology, the third edition

*Uses standard 32-bit MIPS 32 as the primary teaching ISA.
*Presents the assembler-to-HLL translations in both C and Java.
*Highlights the latest developments in architecture in Real Stuff sections:

+ Intel IA-32
+ Power PC 604
+ Google's PC cluster
+ Pentium P4
+ SPEC CPU2000 benchmark suite for processors
+ SPEC Web99 benchmark for web servers
+ EEMBC benchmark for embedded systems
+ AMD Opteron memory hierarchy
+ AMD vs. 1A-64


New support for distinct course goals

Many of the adopters who have used our book throughout its two editions are refining their courses with a greater hardware or software focus. We have provided new material to support these course goals:

New material to support a Hardware Focus

+Using logic design conventions
+Designing with hardware description languages
+Advanced pipelining
+Designing with FPGAs
+HDL simulators and tutorials
+Xilinx CAD tools

New material to support a Software Focus

+How compilers Work
+How to optimize compilers
+How to implement object oriented languages
+MIPS simulator and tutorial
+History sections on programming languages, compilers, operating systems and databases

What's New in the Third Edition

New pedagogical features

Understanding Program Performance
-Analyzes key performance issues from the programmer's perspective

Check Yourself Questions
-Helps students assess their understanding of key points of a section

Computers In the Real World
-Illustrates the diversity of applications of computing technology beyond traditional desktop and servers

For More Practice
-Provides students with additional problems they can tackle

In More Depth
-Presents new information and challenging exercises for the advanced student


New reference features

Highlighted glossary terms and definitions appear on the book page, as bold-faced entries in the index, and as a separate and searchable reference on the CD.

A complete index of the material in the book and on the CD appears in the printed index and the CD includes a fully searchable version of the same index.

Historical Perspectives and Further Readings have been updated and expanded to include the history of software R&D.

CD-Library provides materials collected from the web which directly support the text.

On the CD

CD-Bars: Full length sections that are introduced in the book and presented on the CD

CD-Appendixes: The entire set of appendixes

CD-Library: Materials collected from the web which directly support the text

CD-Exercises: For More Practice provides exercises and solutions for self-study
In More Depth presents new information and challenging exercises for the advanced or curious student

Glossary: Terms that are defined in the text are collected in this searchable reference

Further Reading: References are organized by the chapter they support

Software: HDL simulators, MIPS simulators, and FPGA design tools

Tutorials: SPIM, Verilog, and VHDL

Additional Support: Processor Models, Labs, Homeworks, Index covering the book and CD contents

Instructor Support

+ Instructor Support is provided in a password-protected site to adopters who request the password from our sales representative
+ Solutions to all the exercises
+ Figures from the book in a number of formats
+ Lecture slides prepared by the authors and other instructors
+ Lecture notes

System Requirements
Operating System
Most of the content on this CD can be used under any operating system that includes an HTML browser and a PDF viewer. This includes Windows 98 or later, Mac OS 9 and OS X, and most Linux and Unix systems. Some contributed software on this CD is operating system specific. See the installation instructions on the Software page for details.

HTML Browser
The navigation framework and some of the content on this CD is delivered in HTML and JavaScript. It is recommended that you install the latest version of your favorite HTML browser to view this CD. The content has been verified under Windows 2000 with the following browsers:
Internet Explorer 6.0, Mozilla 1.6, Netscape 7.1, Opera 7.23. Under Mac OS X with the following browsers: Internet Explorer 5.2.3, Mozilla 1.6 , Netscape 7.1, Safari 1.2. And under Mandrake Linux with the following browser:
Galeon 1.3.8.

The content is designed to be viewed in a browser window that is at least 720 pixels wide. You may find the content does not display well if your display is not set to at least 1024x768 pixel resolution.

PDF Viewer
The CD material includes PDF documents that you can read with a PDF viewer such as Adobe® Acrobat® or Adobe Reader®. Recent versions of Adobe Reader for supported platforms are included on the CD. Visit the Adobe Reader home page for more information.

Browser Plugins
Some of the material on this CD makes use of Flash® animations. To view this material, you will need to have Macromedia® Flash Player installed. You can install the Shockwave® Player (which includes Flash) on Windows and Macintosh from this CD. Visit the Macromedia homepage for more information. Note that recent versions of some browsers, including Internet Explorer, Netscape, and AOL, already incorporate Flash Player.

Some of the material on this CD contains photographic panoramas that can only be viewed with the iseemedia Zoom Viewer browser plugin on Windows and Mac OS 9 platforms. Visit iseemedia's website for download instructions.

For instructor resources click on the grey "companion site" button found on the right side of this page.
This new edition represents a major revision.
New to this edition:

* Entire Text has been updated to reflect new technology
* 70% new exercises.
* Includes a CD loaded with software, projects and exercises to support courses using a number of tools
* A new interior design presents defined terms in the margin for quick reference
* A new feature, "Understanding Program Performance" focuses on performance from the programmer's perspective
* Two sets of exercises and solutions, "For More Practice" and "In More Depth," are included on the CD
* "Check Yourself" questions help students check their understanding of major concepts
* "Computers In the Real World" feature illustrates the diversity of uses for information technology
*More detail below...

Amazon.com Review This textbook provides a basic introduction to the fundamentals of current computer designs. As the title suggests, the text skirts the border between hardware and software. After an overview of the subject and a discussion of performance, the book launches into technical matter such as instruction sets, how they are constrained by the underlying processor hardware, the constraints on their design, and more. An excellent critique of computer arithmetic methods leads to a high-level discussion on processor design. Following is a great introduction to pipelining, nice coverage of memory issues, and solid attention to peripherals. The book concludes with a brief discussion of the additional issues inherent in multiprocessing machines. The extremely lucid description is grounded in real-world examples. Interesting exercises help reinforce the material, and each section contains a write-up of the historical background of each idea. Computer Organization and Design is accessible to the beginner, but also offers plenty of valuable knowledge for experienced engineers.