Digital Design and Computer Architecture

Fantastic book used as a first or second read in computers (Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond is another good choice, but I think this one is even better) for aspiring or Freshmen computer science/engineering students. This book includes fundamental material that every programmer or computer engineer simply needs to know about computers. While the material here is probably not unique to this book, its engaging presentation and features make it stand out. This book is often used as a first text in intro computer engineering classes at universities across the US.I helped train new interns and new hires while working at Intel and I always gave them this book as a starting point if they were struggling. It often filled in gaps that their university education (unfortunately) didn't cover. There's no way one book will cover everything you need to know about designing computer hardware, but if you're new to the field this is probably the best book to learn the basics so you can move on to more advanced concepts and ideas. I enjoyed the humor, writing, exercises, and sample interview questions in particular.Another great thing about this book is that it doesn't really have any prerequisites. You could read this in Jr High or High School. The examples are well motivated and include helpful graphics, historical information about the people who developed the fundamental ideas of computing, asides to clarify common misconceptions and more. Obviously a lot of thought and care went into writing this book to be clear, concise, and even fun. One example: HDL Examples are shown in both VHDL and Verilog so students can learn both or reference which is used in their class/company. I cannot overstate how important the material in this book is and how amazing it is that the authors were able to take a subject I thought was relatively dry and make it engaging. This is one of those textbooks that is worth every penny and will stay on my shelf for the rest of my life.

This is one of very few (arguably the only one) texts that combines and integrates digital design with actual architecture-- high and detail level. For the new (2nd) 2013 edition, Harris and Harris still teach simpler/ elegant systems that beginning Engineers and hobbyists love like MIPS and PIC 32, however they also add very recent and modern design and implementation solutions including parallel and multicore processors, the x86, multithreading, out of order and superscalar operations and branch prediction, to name a few. These topics are not only state of the art, but normally covered in grad rather than undergrad courses.The thorny issues of parallel programming start at the assembly level, and it is astonishing and refreshing that these authors integrate methods as high level as embedded C and as basic as the digital circuits that implement assembly, and then relate them to considerations like temperature, memory, component sharing of workloads (the GPU often doubles as a CAS implementer or APU in these days where "math coprocessors" have been eliminated), etc.Every Engineer and hobbyist knows that getting a serious shot at a patent means implementation beyond simulation. That is where this new edition really shines. Other texts are out of date in a few months-- Harris and Harris give web and manufacturer resources that are available NOW (we checked), from design to finished boards. The authors also assume that after you spent your entire budget on this book you will appreciate cheap, open source solutions to getting to that million dollar patent. They don't disappoint-- the "lab" includes cheapware and freeware in the form of IDEs/SDKs like Quartus II, MPLAB and Synplify, then take your favorite HDL (Verilog OR VHDL) and move from IDE output to code. Finally, the authors give altera alternatives in boards like the DE2 that are specifically designed to execute educational, developmental and student code-- as well as hobbyists!A REALLY cool feature if you're getting into this as a career-- each chapter has sample interview questions for your next job. Like good programming books, the authors CARE that you get that job and include examples of what you'll be asked, with great answers on their support websites.All in all, a GREAT update to their first trend setting text, and a hands on manual on "how to" build your own chipset. If you're an OOP person you might be shocked that they cover C so much, but you've got to realize that "high level" at the circuit to assembly level is STILL C, and not so much Ada, Python, C# or Java (yet). Some other reviews around the web and in previous editions zinged them about this, but those reviewers aren't in the real world-- even for the most modern 2013 luxury autos with 60+ embedded chips, when designers go beyond assembly, they still default to C. Just because it's not OOP doesn't mean it's dead! If your own design prefers Python, or you're a JAVA junkie, fret not-- there are plenty of libraries that will handshake with assembly since embedded is the wave of the future, and this text is just as relevant. Eiffel even has a plug in that you can run on Visual Studio, and "lunch" off of your C# SDK to debug a second language-- although, granted, they are both OOP.NOTE FOR EDUCATORS: If you're a Junior College ID or exec/ dept. head, you might consider using this book as the basis for a year long course on circuit design to either prepare your grads for an AS/AA in electronics, or as a step to the EE. Once the grad gets into the real world of multi core, they will quickly find that "it's about the memory, stupid" that causes most performance challenges-- on board being heat and size costly, off board being time and speed costly, with cpu "work arounds" suprisingly more common than memory innovations-- a PERFECT field for that new patent.Many colleges are getting into "game programming" curricula because they offer an applied exposure to math, OOP, etc. This book gives you a non-herd alternative for your school-- with labs that ROCK. I'm an ID at ClassPros, and the schools at which we set up circuit design courses have even used the strategy to partner with name brand 4 year colleges in continuing on to the EE for the brightest students. GET THIS BOOK, and then think about how magnificently it would fit in such a curriculum!5 Stars-- a great start to getting that award-winning, financially rewarding patent on your new chip design, OR introducing a sim lab oriented, fun-project, high STEM curriculum item to your school-- go for it!

Covers plenty of material, but the trade-off is that the early chapters on digital logic lack depth. I used another book -- Fundamentals of Logic Design -- to fill in some gaps. Nevertheless, the solutions PDF for this book, available for free, is very extensive and extremely helpful.

This is a broad-and-shallow sort of book, an introduction to the design and implementation of computer microprocessors from quite literally the transistor level up to working implementations of a small subset of the MIPS instruction set, with further discussion of things like caching and I/O (in this latter case focusing on a real microcontroller system). This sounds like (and is) a lot of ground to cover, and the authors do so in a very friendly, approachable, and readable manner. This subject may not be presentable in such a way as to make it truly easy to pick up, but I think this is about as close as it's possible to get. If you've been assigned this book in some kind of class, thank your professor(s); if you're interested in independent study of the topic, you could most certainly do worse. Enthusiastically recommended.