Computer organization and design - David A. Patterson

What's New in the Third Edition, Revised Printing

The same great book gets better! This 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

Third Edition features

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.


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


On the CD

NEW: Search function to search for content on both the CD-ROM and the printed text
CD-Bars: Full length sections that are introduced in the book and presented on the CD
CD-Appendixes: Appendices B-D
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 provided on textbooks.elsevier.com:

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