Deep Understanding of Computer Systems

Author: Bryant
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features:
· Amazon 5-star book, one of the great computer science textbooks;
· Launched by the Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a dual Fellow of IEEE and ACM;
· Used as a textbook by more than 80 top universities in the U.S. and around the world;
· Praised as an invaluable resource treasure trove worth more than its weight in gold;
This textbook combines software and hardware theories to teach computer systems;
Covers courses such as Introduction to Computers, Computer Architecture, and Processor Design;
Proven effective through extensive student use and widely recommended by both teachers and students;
Complete teaching website providing online support for instructors and students.
A must-read for all developers who want to write faster, more reliable programs!
See computer systems from a programmer's perspective!
This book is for programmers who want to write faster, more reliable programs.
By understanding how programs map to systems and how they execute, readers can better grasp why programs behave the way they do and where inefficiencies arise.
At a glance, a computer system includes processor and memory hardware, compilers, operating systems, and network interconnection environments.
From a programmer's perspective, readers can clearly understand how learning the internal workings of computer systems will further help them in their future work as computer science researchers and engineers.
It also prepares them for further studies in computer architecture, operating systems, compilers, and network interconnections.
The main topics of this book include: data representation, machine-level representation of C programs, processor architecture, program optimization, memory hierarchy, linking, exception control flow, virtual memory and memory management, system-level I/O, network programming, and concurrent programming.
The content covered primarily focuses on how these aspects affect application and system programmers.
For example, when discussing data representation, the book explains that the methods used to represent numbers are limited—they can approximate integers and real numbers but have restrictions that programmers must understand.
When discussing caches, the book discusses how the order of loop variables in matrix code affects program performance.
When discussing network interconnections, the book describes how concurrent servers can efficiently handle requests from multiple clients.
This book is based on Intel-compatible (IA32) machines, executing C programs on Unix or related operating systems (e.g., Linux).
Although the book includes some tips to help readers convert Java to C, it still requires readers to have some familiarity with C or C++.