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Computer Architecture
Not since the 1980s has computer architecture been so exciting! This book captures the moment, mining the history of computing to teach key concepts in modern hardware design and introduce the neural and quantum architectures of the future.
Computer architecture was once considered a boring subject, but not anymore! With Moore's Law slowing to a crawl, computing hardware is experiencing a new golden age. This fun, informative book takes a look at the past to offer inspiration for the radical designs of tomorrow, tracing the development of modern systems from Stone Age tallies and Babbage's engines, to present-day cloud architectures, quantum computers, and big data parallelization.
Based on author Charles Fox’s award-winning university-level computer-architecture course, it covers the inner workings of the computer, from circuits to CPUs to memory and beyond. Fresh ideas are introduced using concepts from history, music, gaming and retro computing, and other interesting areas of study. In addition, practical computer exercises are provided in every chapter, such as building a CPU from digital logic, and programming machines like the Commodore 64, x86 and RISC-V. By the end, you’ll learn all of the hardware requirements of a Computer Science degree, including digital logic, memory, IO, assembly programming, IoT embedded systems, and more.
Computer architecture was once considered a boring subject, but not anymore! With Moore's Law slowing to a crawl, computing hardware is experiencing a new golden age. This fun, informative book takes a look at the past to offer inspiration for the radical designs of tomorrow, tracing the development of modern systems from Stone Age tallies and Babbage's engines, to present-day cloud architectures, quantum computers, and big data parallelization.
Based on author Charles Fox’s award-winning university-level computer-architecture course, it covers the inner workings of the computer, from circuits to CPUs to memory and beyond. Fresh ideas are introduced using concepts from history, music, gaming and retro computing, and other interesting areas of study. In addition, practical computer exercises are provided in every chapter, such as building a CPU from digital logic, and programming machines like the Commodore 64, x86 and RISC-V. By the end, you’ll learn all of the hardware requirements of a Computer Science degree, including digital logic, memory, IO, assembly programming, IoT embedded systems, and more.
560 pages, Paperback
Published May 7, 2024
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74 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 31, 2025
I've read lots of books about computer architecture both from the academic perspective and from "casual" perspective. This books IMHO comes into the latter group.
You will not find here all the hacks and intricacies about modern CPU architecture, but you will find the overall overview of all the needed parts to at least to know about them. And while it lacks these details, I believe they are not needed here.
I really liked reading about the history of computer architecture at the beginning of the book. It even made me nostalgic at some points. I've learned some new interesting facts I didn't know about from historical perspective. And in the end of the book it was interesting to read about possible evolvement of the computer architecture.
So, I think, for a casual book about computer architecture it was really a nice read, 5/5.
You will not find here all the hacks and intricacies about modern CPU architecture, but you will find the overall overview of all the needed parts to at least to know about them. And while it lacks these details, I believe they are not needed here.
I really liked reading about the history of computer architecture at the beginning of the book. It even made me nostalgic at some points. I've learned some new interesting facts I didn't know about from historical perspective. And in the end of the book it was interesting to read about possible evolvement of the computer architecture.
So, I think, for a casual book about computer architecture it was really a nice read, 5/5.
October 6, 2024
Great read! I have an EECS degree but never took a Comp Arch class surprisingly. This filled in a lot of the gaps and specifically touched on some of the parallel computing shortcomings I wanted to cover in the GPU portion of the book. I'm a big fan of an easy to read textbook (few and far between) and this is definitely one of those. I skipped the first quarter given that was largely review from my courses, but refreshers and deep dives into the hardware and instruction level codes was great. Definitely recommend if you want to understand device hardware better!
(reading Harry Potter so much really made me overcorrect into reading a literal textbooks. I am a nerd.)
(reading Harry Potter so much really made me overcorrect into reading a literal textbooks. I am a nerd.)
January 31, 2025
For someone totally out of the loop, Charles Fox offers a substantial introduction to the history of computing as a context for where computing has gone, and perhaps where it is going.
For such a crossroads like the one we're in now, it's fascinating.
At a certain point, I lost my grip on the points Fox made, and it's clear I'll need to re-read this a couple times through to help cement a lot of the major ideas.
For someone especially who is interested in the architecture of retro gaming consoles up to the x86 based ones, this is a very handy tool to see how they worked.
For such a crossroads like the one we're in now, it's fascinating.
At a certain point, I lost my grip on the points Fox made, and it's clear I'll need to re-read this a couple times through to help cement a lot of the major ideas.
For someone especially who is interested in the architecture of retro gaming consoles up to the x86 based ones, this is a very handy tool to see how they worked.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews