[comp.edu] Computer Architecture and Organization

tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L Hausmann) (05/05/88)

    While searching for reasonable texts, another person in our dept
    showed me a text by Sajjan G. Shiva, _Computer Design and Architecture_,
    Little, Brown & Company.

    What (if any) experiences do people have using this text?

    -Tom

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Hausmann       Dept. of Computer Sciences     Purdue University
tlh@medusa.cs.purdue.edu                   ...!purdue!tlh               

matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) (05/06/88)

In article <3996@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L Hausmann) writes:
>
>    While searching for reasonable texts, another person in our dept
>    showed me a text by Sajjan G. Shiva, _Computer Design and Architecture_,
>    Little, Brown & Company.
>
>    What (if any) experiences do people have using this text?
>
>    -Tom

I've used Shiva, but only once, due to deficiencies I will explain
below.

On the plus side, Shiva is the first and only text I've ever seen
that the students really like.  Even Tanenbaum is less well-received
(possibly because it's difficult for students in an *introductory*
level course to fully appreciate his "levels" concept).

Another plus is that some of the exercises are quite good.

On the minus side, the book deals too much with implementation of
CPU's, relative to what it does otherwise.  There is not much at
all on true "architecture" (i.e. choice of instruction sets and
addressing modes), and almost nothing on memory hierarchies, which
I consider a key topic.  

It is my understanding that Shiva is now working on a second edition, 
remedying these problems.

Side note:  In my opinion, almost architecture books are written more
for the author's peers than the students.  The books take an awful lot
of granted, quite often writing in such a way that presumes the
students already have some fairly sophisticated knowledge, in spite
of the book's claim to be "introductory."

Second side note:  Has anyone had the following problems?  Being in
an EECS department, my architecture courses consist of EE students,
CS students and students in a hybrid EE/CS major that we offer.  I
find it very difficult to motivate the EE and CS students.  The EE
students are too used to a course being either "lab type", in which
one produces something tangible, or "math type", in which they can
produce equations; thus the react well to the implementation parts
of my course, but complain that these parts are not 100% of the
course, i.e. they don't like the qualitative stuff such as factors
entering in to choosing an instruction set/addressing modes.  On
the other hand, the CS majors dismiss the whole subject as "hardware",
mistakenly thinking that it is irrelevant to them.  Comments?

    Norm Matloff

dlsc1032@dlscg1.UUCP (Alan Beal) (05/06/88)

In article <3996@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L Hausmann) writes:
>     While searching for reasonable texts, another person in our dept
>     showed me a text by Sajjan G. Shiva, _Computer Design and Architecture_,
>     Little, Brown & Company.
>     What (if any) experiences do people have using this text?

Our class in computer architecture used this book and we found it to be full
of typographical errors.  Otherwise, it provided a rather basic introduction
to digital circuit design.

-- 
Alan Beal   DLSC-ZBC                 Autovon    932-4160
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Battle Creek, MI 49015               FTS        552-4160
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haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000) (05/06/88)

Since nobody else has mentioned it, I used the book "Introduction to
Computer ARchitecture and Organization" by Harold Lorin (Wiley, 1982).
This was mostly for the students to read on their own while I 
gave lectures on everything under the sun.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes

matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) (05/07/88)

In article <3183@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes:
>Since nobody else has mentioned it, I used the book "Introduction to
>Computer ARchitecture and Organization" by Harold Lorin (Wiley, 1982).

Very nice book!  However, it is completely qualitative and
philosophical.  Although it might make a nice supplement, as
Jim mentioned, I don't think it would work at all as a main
text.  E.g. in following up on what I said earlier, the EE
students, who are in an "implementation mindset", wouldn't
like it.

   Norm Matloff