5 ms·

This guy is one of my heroes, I could not be happier. Go him. The H&P book on computer architecture is a book that changed my life. He is like Knuth except t

This guy is one of my heroes, I could not be happier. Go him. The H&P book on computer architecture is a book that changed my life. He is like Knuth except that I understand what he says. The Knuth stuff, I get it, it's profound, but I never got it. It was too hard. H&P, they laid it out in ways that I could understand. I'm not stupid but I'm not that smart, I really loved that book, it was written in a way that not so smart people get it. If there was a way I could say "go you", yeah, I want to do that. He's a great guy, has done great work, go him. And all that said, I bet this is not a "go him" job, I bet he makes a difference, maybe a huge one, maybe not so huge, but I bet he makes a difference. Let's come back in 5 years, I bet he will have made stuff better.

timb07 9y ago
I too loved "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", and read it all the way through before the semester even started. Each chapter had a pithy quote at the start, and my favorite was the excerpt from the EDSAC instruction set: Z -- Halt and Ring Bell: Stop the machine and ring the warning bell
- onikolas 9y ago
  Meh, it has a lot of fallacies and pitfalls.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    Can you elaborate a bit? Unsubstantiated drive-by insults aren’t very useful to other readers. Edit: thanks for the explanation. Note to the several downvoters: you aren’t accomplishing much here by “punishing” innocent unfamiliarity with an in-joke...
    - warkdarrior 9y ago
      It's a joke. Every chapter in the book has a section titled "Fallacies and Pitfalls" describing commonly held beliefs that should be avoided for the topic of that chapter. See for example page 58 here: https://books.google.com/books?id=cM8mDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA58#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=cM8mDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- gargarplex 9y ago
  Can you recommend a book that would serve as a useful prerequisite to CA: AQA? Based on your recommendation, I flipped through the first few pages on Amazon, but it felt a lot like Algebra 2 without knowing Algebra 1.
  - torinmr 9y ago
    At my university CA: AQA was used as the text for the second course in computer architecture. The first course in computer architecture used this book: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fourth-Architecture/dp/0123747503/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E214BA3CMPK44D3AAGXQ https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fourth-A.... If you do get around to reading CA: AQA, you can follow along with this Coursera course (it's taught by the professor I had when I took it at Princeton, and he does a great job teaching it): https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparch https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparch
    - gargarplex 9y ago
      I don't have enough patience for courses. I sort of scan the material for what I really need or want to learn and ignore what's not interesting to me. I can make consistent A's with the benefit of Adderall, but I don't feel comfortable with that. Your recommendation was very useful and interesting to me, and I bought the paperback. I was surprised that it was cheaper to buy a used paperback than to rent it via Kindle for a month.
  - sidzpah 9y ago
    It's another book by the same author - Computer Organisation and design : the hardware/software interface - http://a.co/aQYK7DG http://a.co/aQYK7DG
  - jdironman 9y ago
    If you want a more in-depth look at the book a quick google found me this on the first page results. https://github.com/QSCTech/zju-icicles/blob/master/%E8%AE%A1%E7%AE%97%E6%9C%BA%E4%BD%93%E7%B3%BB%E7%BB%93%E6%9E%84/%E6%95%99%E6%9D%90/Computer%20Architecture%20-%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(Fifth%20Edition).pdf https://github.com/QSCTech/zju-icicles/blob/master/%E8%AE%A1...
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  Seconded, that's a great book. Also, Hennessy was also one of the minds behind the MIPS architecture.
webkike 9y ago
C'mon, all you are doing is selling yourself short
PaulKeeble 9y ago
I found reading the Art of Computer programming books wasn't that bad. If you ignore the quantative analysis for the algorithms and just look into the algorithms themselves then there are a lot of gems in here that you just don't find anywhere else. If you want to learn how to prove the algorithm runtime then there is obviously a lot more to the books, but for finding other algorithms and data structures it is a great tome of options and its organised in a way to just dip into when you have a particular problem. Don't ignore the books on the assumption its too hard as that wasn't my experience of them.
bpicolo 9y ago
Computer organization and design was by far my favorite class (at UMich). It really played well to the puzzle of engineering that makes me love the field in the first place.
- heedlessly2 9y ago
  Eecs 370 or 470? They both use one of Hennessy's book. Although I think 370 used Tanebaum's years before that
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    370, the exams for that course were just a blast, only exams I've had genuine fun taking in my life. Would have done 470 but I graduated a semester early (that and programming languages courses are ones I retrospectively regret not having taken). Computer Organization and Design 4ed was the one at the time I think - it is Hennessy. I love computer science now a lot more than I did at the time, heh, but that's part of why I bothered finishing early. The professional environment suits me well.
    - heedlessly2 9y ago
      Just curious, what kind of work do you do now?
      - bpicolo 9y ago
        Software engineer. Same username on github will lead you to linkedin if you're curious about my (relatively short) career timeline there.
cowsandmilk 9y ago
I see a new 6th edition came out in December 2017 Are the new editions worth it? My library lets me get an e-book of the 4th edition from 2007 for free, so are the last decade of added material worth buying it?

timb07 9y ago

I too loved "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", and read it all the way through before the semester even started. Each chapter had a pithy quote at the start, and my favorite was the excerpt from the EDSAC instruction set: Z -- Halt and Ring Bell: Stop the machine and ring the warning bell

onikolas 9y ago
Meh, it has a lot of fallacies and pitfalls.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Can you elaborate a bit? Unsubstantiated drive-by insults aren’t very useful to other readers. Edit: thanks for the explanation. Note to the several downvoters: you aren’t accomplishing much here by “punishing” innocent unfamiliarity with an in-joke...
  - warkdarrior 9y ago
    It's a joke. Every chapter in the book has a section titled "Fallacies and Pitfalls" describing commonly held beliefs that should be avoided for the topic of that chapter. See for example page 58 here: https://books.google.com/books?id=cM8mDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA58#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=cM8mDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
gargarplex 9y ago
Can you recommend a book that would serve as a useful prerequisite to CA: AQA? Based on your recommendation, I flipped through the first few pages on Amazon, but it felt a lot like Algebra 2 without knowing Algebra 1.
- torinmr 9y ago
  At my university CA: AQA was used as the text for the second course in computer architecture. The first course in computer architecture used this book: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fourth-Architecture/dp/0123747503/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E214BA3CMPK44D3AAGXQ https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fourth-A.... If you do get around to reading CA: AQA, you can follow along with this Coursera course (it's taught by the professor I had when I took it at Princeton, and he does a great job teaching it): https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparch https://www.coursera.org/learn/comparch
  - gargarplex 9y ago
    I don't have enough patience for courses. I sort of scan the material for what I really need or want to learn and ignore what's not interesting to me. I can make consistent A's with the benefit of Adderall, but I don't feel comfortable with that. Your recommendation was very useful and interesting to me, and I bought the paperback. I was surprised that it was cheaper to buy a used paperback than to rent it via Kindle for a month.
- sidzpah 9y ago
  It's another book by the same author - Computer Organisation and design : the hardware/software interface - http://a.co/aQYK7DG http://a.co/aQYK7DG
- jdironman 9y ago
  If you want a more in-depth look at the book a quick google found me this on the first page results. https://github.com/QSCTech/zju-icicles/blob/master/%E8%AE%A1%E7%AE%97%E6%9C%BA%E4%BD%93%E7%B3%BB%E7%BB%93%E6%9E%84/%E6%95%99%E6%9D%90/Computer%20Architecture%20-%20A%20Quantitative%20Approach%20(Fifth%20Edition).pdf https://github.com/QSCTech/zju-icicles/blob/master/%E8%AE%A1...
MaxBarraclough 9y ago
Seconded, that's a great book. Also, Hennessy was also one of the minds behind the MIPS architecture.

webkike 9y ago

C'mon, all you are doing is selling yourself short

PaulKeeble 9y ago

I found reading the Art of Computer programming books wasn't that bad. If you ignore the quantative analysis for the algorithms and just look into the algorithms themselves then there are a lot of gems in here that you just don't find anywhere else. If you want to learn how to prove the algorithm runtime then there is obviously a lot more to the books, but for finding other algorithms and data structures it is a great tome of options and its organised in a way to just dip into when you have a particular problem. Don't ignore the books on the assumption its too hard as that wasn't my experience of them.

bpicolo 9y ago

Computer organization and design was by far my favorite class (at UMich). It really played well to the puzzle of engineering that makes me love the field in the first place.

heedlessly2 9y ago
Eecs 370 or 470? They both use one of Hennessy's book. Although I think 370 used Tanebaum's years before that
- bpicolo 9y ago
  370, the exams for that course were just a blast, only exams I've had genuine fun taking in my life. Would have done 470 but I graduated a semester early (that and programming languages courses are ones I retrospectively regret not having taken). Computer Organization and Design 4ed was the one at the time I think - it is Hennessy. I love computer science now a lot more than I did at the time, heh, but that's part of why I bothered finishing early. The professional environment suits me well.
  - heedlessly2 9y ago
    Just curious, what kind of work do you do now?
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      Software engineer. Same username on github will lead you to linkedin if you're curious about my (relatively short) career timeline there.

cowsandmilk 9y ago

I see a new 6th edition came out in December 2017 Are the new editions worth it? My library lets me get an e-book of the 4th edition from 2007 for free, so are the last decade of added material worth buying it?