Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (Revised Edition)

Author: Randal E. Bryant
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2004-05-01
Features: A must-read book for all developers who want to write faster and more reliable programs! ★Amazon 5-star book, one of the greatest computer science textbooks ★Pulled out by the Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Fellow of both IEEE and ACM ★Adopted as a textbook by over 80 top universities in the United States and around the world See what instructors have to say about this book:
"I firmly believe that computer systems from a programmer's perspective are very helpful in teaching students the internal structure of computers." —Kostas Daniilidis, University of Pennsylvania
"This book presents things in a unique way, but it's similar to the way I wanted the course to be." —John Greiner, Rice University
"This is an outstanding work and a revolution in teaching methods in this field." —Michael Scott, University of Rochester
Author Randal E. Bryant is the Head of the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a Fellow of both ACM and IEEE, and his research has been awarded numerous prizes by ACM and IEEE. This book provides numerous examples and exercises, with some answers provided. Notably, for every fundamental concept, there are corresponding handwritten or program-based experiments to deepen readers' understanding.
From a programmer's perspective, view computer systems! This book is for programmers who want to write faster and 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. Roughly speaking, computer systems include 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 helps prepare for further study in computer architecture, operating systems, compilers, and network interconnection.
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 approximately represent 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 interconnection, the book describes how concurrent servers can effectively handle requests from multiple clients.
This book is based on Intel-compatible (IA32) machines and executes 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++. You can access complete materials, including experiments and assignments, lecture notes, and code examples, through the book's website at www.csapp.cs.cmu.edu.
This English edition of the book is highly renowned and called by many professionals as one of the greatest computer science textbooks. The famous Carnegie Mellon University Department of Computer Science has long used this book as a textbook. It is a monumental work that thoroughly explains computer systems from the perspective of programmers.
Author Randal E. Bryant is the Head of the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a Fellow of both ACM and IEEE, and his research has been awarded numerous prizes by ACM and IEEE. This book is divided into thirteen chapters, introducing exciting topics such as the representation and processing of information, machine-level representation of programs, processor architecture, memory hierarchy, static and dynamic linking, virtual memory, system-level I/O, network programming, and concurrent programming. Its purpose is to explain all the essential concepts of computer systems and show readers how these concepts practically affect the correctness, performance, and usability of applications. Unlike other system books that primarily target system builders, this book is written for programmers and described from their perspective.
This book bridges the gap between software and hardware, providing a way for readers to understand a program and its behavior from both hardware and software perspectives, filling a gap in computer system teaching. The greatest advantage of this book is helping readers understand concepts, allowing them to clearly construct a hierarchical computer system in their minds, from the lowest-level data representation in memory (such as the always-mysterious floating-point representation) to the composition of pipeline instructions, to virtual memory, to the compilation system, to dynamically loaded libraries, to the final user application. The book provides numerous examples and exercises, with some answers provided. Notably, for every fundamental concept, there are corresponding handwritten or program-based experiments to deepen readers' understanding.