The Architecture of Computer Hardware and Systems Software: An Information Technology Approach

The book is very helpful. The only complaint is that they do not have a keyword dictionary at the end of each chapter.

This book extensively covers the topics in depth, and does a good job at making a complicated subject easy to understand. While for the most part Irv does a good job of communicating technical material in an easy to understand manner, you can only simplify technical details so much, and this book is certainly not for beginners. After taking the author's class in the subject, I've come to understand that by the end of the book you might hate the author, but at least you'll learn something. One of the more challenging subjects, but you can learn a great deal from this book. Because it's a book in architecture, however, it's important to keep in mind that a great deal of this book is theoretical and not specifically practical to everyday computer usage.

This book is an excellent introduction for those familiar with computers, but is neither for dummies nor for rocket scientists.It is a well-balanced book suitable for both IT students and those working in the industry who want to know what goes on in PCs and system servers. The clean layout, the sequence of information presentation and the author's writing style makes this diffcult topic a joy to read about. Some criticism - the presentation of numbers could be reduced, the appendices on logic could be expanded and a chapter on client-server architecture would be the icing on the cake. Another worthy book but a bit dry is 'Silberschatz et al.'. Check it out before you buy.

From my non-experience in computer architecture. This book shows me everything I need and more about computers. I have taken the course with Mr. Englander at Bentley College. He is a great professor and writer. Indeed he knows his stuff. He even has his own computer on display at Boston's Museum of Science.

This book is an excellent starting point for the casual user that wants (or needs) to *really* understand the internals of a modern PC. Starts from ground zero and works up to a good amount of detail. After reading this, you will know most of the jargon, what is important to performance and WHY. I found it easy to skip the topics I knew and understand the following sections.