Product Description

The first Computer Architecture text to recognize that computers are now predinantly used in a networking environment, fully updated to include new technologies and with an all new chapter on Distributed Computing.

Customer Reviews (3)

DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!
I would not recommend this book to anyone. From the very beginning it is badly explained and illustrated, with very little regard for easing the reader in gently. The topics covered are highly complex for an introductory book of this nature and the writing style is amature to say the least. If there was an option I wouldn't have given this book even the 1 star it doesn't deserve. DON'T BUY IT!!

Most helpful computing text book I've read!
The most useful book I have bought for this subject and many other subject related to it. There were a number of complex topics in it which were new to me, but they were explained in a way that I understood. It is also very useful as a reference for stuff I have covered many times before! I highly recomend this book to anyone regardless of what level you're at!

Poor explanation throughout
I have read many books covering this subject but found this one particularly hard to understand. The concepts are not clearly explaned and I would not adivise anybody to purchase this book unless they already have a very good understanding of basic computer architecure. This is not a book for begginers ... Read more

Product Description
A solid introduction to the practices, plans, and skills required for developing a smart system architecture

Information architecture combines IT skills with business skills in order to align the IT structure of an organization with the mission, goals, and objectives of its business. This friendly introduction to IT architecture walks you through the myriad issues and complex decisions that many organizations face when setting up IT systems to work in sync with business procedures.

Veteran IT professional and author Kirk Hausman explains the business value behind IT architecture and provides you with an action plan for implementing IT architecture procedures in an organization. You'll explore the many challenges that organizations face as they attempt to use technology to enhance their business's productivity so that you can gain a solid understanding of the elements that are required to plan and create an architecture that meets specific business goals.

• Defines IT architecture as a blend of IT skills and business skills that focuses on business optimization, business architecture, performance management, and organizational structure
• Uncovers and examines every topic within IT architecture including network, system, data, services, application, and more
• Addresses the challenges that organizations face when attempting to use information technology to enable profitability and business continuity

While companies look to technology more than ever to enhance productivity, you should look to IT Architecture For Dummies for guidance in this field. ... Read more

Product Description
An introduction to the nature of computer architecture and organization. Presents interesting problems with elegant solutions, with emphasis on the abstract elements of the problems common to all computer design. Addresses the several schools of thought on what constitutes a ``good'' computer architecture, focusing on the current RISC versus non-RISC approaches. Also discusses the downward drift of design sophistication to smaller machines, such as pipelines, caches, and overlapped I/O. Includes many examples of specific machines and the design philosophy behind them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Architecture of the computer kind
Reviews architectures and operation of conventional computers. The term 'architecture' can be used to refer to the view of a conventional computer as shown by its assembly language, as well as in other contexts. This reference considers the basic elements of a conventional computer architecture, compilation, data coding, registers, memory addressing, instruction sets, branching in programs, subroutines, interrupts, virtual memory, input/output, instruction execution, increasing performance, instruction lookahead, parallel and pipeline instruction execution. ... Read more

Product Description

This book takes a modern structured, layered approach to understanding computer systems. It's highly accessible - and it's been thoroughly updated to reflect today's most critical new technologies and the latest developments in computer organization and architecture. Tanenbaum’s renowned writing style and painstaking research make this one of the most accessible and accurate books available, maintaining the author’s popular method of presenting a computer as a series of layers, each one built upon the ones below it, and understandable as a separate entity. A CD-ROM for assembly language programmers is available for teachers. For all computer professionals and engineers who need an overview or introduction to computer architecture.

Customer Reviews (6)

Outstanding
I'm really impressed by this title. It's like the Matrix red pill to the computer structure.
It is crystal clear and linear and the content is organized in the best possible way to teach the ( difficult ) concepts reviewed.
The talent of Mr Tanenbaum in presenting and distilling the key aspects really shows.

A knowledge of low-level programming language will greatly enhance the reading experience.

An excellent intro computer engineering text
We used the fourth edition of this book in my undergrad Computer Organization course almost 8 years ago.Since then, I've taken other classes (both undergrad and grad)which have used Hennessy and Patterson as well as others books.While H&P may be more complete, the accessibility and clarity of Tenenbaum's presentation make this a superior intro text in my opinion.I appreciated the bits of humor thrown into this book as well.

Interpreters, Microcode, Microarchitectures, Virtual Machines
It was back in 1987. Our computer architecture teacher presented us with the second edition of this book (1984 ed.). The book opened a new understanding on systems technology and machine sequencing for me. I even designed in paper a version of Mic1 microarchitecture to solve a problem we had with a hand held device.

This book will provide you with a good and basic background on machine sequencing and multilevel models. Use this as a base for your TCP/IP or stack communication protocol study (see my review of TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2 - Implementation).

Highlights (fifth edition, 2006):

* Multilevel vision of machines (a very important basic topic), pages 2-7
* Principal metric (prefixes) units, page 46
* Bits, bytes, byte ordering on memory, pages 69-73
* Binary numbers on Apendix A and B
* Binary codes and Communication equipments, pages 117-130
* Basic transistor switching logic and logical design, chapter 3 complete
* Java virtual machine and interpreter design (beautiful description!), chapter 4 complete
* The DVD includes a graphic microarchitecture simulator and Java byte-code assembler (back in 1988 I started my own bipolar npn transistor/resistance/prototype board based Microarchitecture! but it was so large and I only complete a 4 bit ALU and 8 register data path). Now (2008) you can enjoy and program a Java version with the DVD material

In resume, this book as long as TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2 - Implementation, is a good (like a toy) self learning path in machine organization and interconnection.

Yes Yes.
Good book to understand the organization of computers. I used it in undergrad course. Will recommend it.

Tanenbaum is good...Gotta give him that.
I'm only 1/3 through the book so far, but it's been good.There's even a few snippits of dry humor that make it a little more interesting.As far as breadth and depth of material goes, it starts out assuming you know very little about hardware/architecture, and takes you step by step from there.Assuming the book stays as interesting and downright wooty, I'll give it 5 stars.It's not very often that I find a computer book that I'm willing to read cover to cover. ... Read more

Product Description
The objective of this book is to make it possible (and even easy) for students to master both assembly language and the fundamentals of architecture in a single semester. Integrating coverage of software and hardware throughout, the book uses H1- a simple, horizontally microprogrammed computer- as a unifying theme. Like all simple models, H1 has flaws, but this book puts these flaws to good use. In particular, in addition to showing students how H1 works and what is wrong with it, the book shows students how to fix it (which they then proceed to do). Students learn best by doing, and this book supplies much to do with various examples and projects to facilitate learning. For example, students not only use assemblers and linkers, they also write their own. Students study and use instruction sets to implement their own. The result is a book that is easy to read, engaging, and substantial. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Best computer related book I've read
I really have nothing to add to the other reviews of this book. I've never learned as much from one single book as I have reading this one. Love it!

This really should be 6 stars...
This is probably one of the best computer architecture books I have ever read. The thing I like about this book is that Reis does not fall into the same trap as other authors and fills the first seven chapters of the book with lessons on what binary and hex is and how to convert between the two. I have always hated when technical authors begin an advanced technical book with freshmen level topics such as number systems. Real does not repeat this typical mistake. He actually teaches advanced topics such as how the JVM actually works, or how to write a simple compiler by using simple examples and that one can build on. He is obviously very knowledgeable, but uses non technical language in order to reach you. Kudos for a job well done Mr. Reis.

This is one of the greatest books about assembly
This is one of the greatest books about assembly you can buy...

I will tell you why:

The most of the books (e.g. 'Assembly Language Master Class' of Wrox) which you can buy about assembly are about topics like 'how to paint a bitmap on the screen', 'how to write to a file', 'how to read a character from the keyboard', and so on.

This is nice if you only want to know some little tricks and learn (nearly) nothing about assembly.

If you want to learn something about assembly buy this book! This book covers nearly everything you can imagine in depth.

The nice thing is that is starts like a typical B.Sc computer science computersystem/architecture class: what are numbers, what's hex, what's binary. What about negative numbers? This is a really nice book for someone without formal CS education which want to jump to that level (and beyond).

It covers number theory (hex/bin/etc), Logic units and ALU, etc. etc. This book covers really everything: Virtual Memory, OO programming in Assembly (yeah read it right), different processor architectures, instruction sets, codegenerating by compilers, writting an assembler (yeah cool! 'an' not 'in') etc. etc.

So: if you are looking for a tips and tricks book look somewhere else. This book starts pretty easy, so a lot of people can read this text, but after you finished this 800 page pounder you will have more insight in low level programming than a typical B.Sc/M.Sc in Computer Science (like me).

Best book in this subject
This book is the best book I've seen in assembly language/architecture. It's very clear, thorough, and concrete. It is really superb in how it teaches system concepts. And it shows how C++ and Java works, in addition to how computers work. It has a great chapter on the JVM. It also covers the SPARC and the Pentium. By means of the included software, the reader can design, implement, and test new architectures.

New approach to assembly language/architecture
I rank this book at the same level as the Patterson/Hennessy book on computer organization. P/H is more advanced on the hardware side (perhaps too advanced for a first course in this area) but much weaker on the software side. Reis' book is better for a first course. The software that comes with the book is well designed and works well. It allows you to work with the computer at both the machine and micro levels. I've been using the Linux version. Versions are also available for DOS, Windows, Sun Sparc, and Macintosh OS X. ... Read more

Product Description
Optics is entering all phases of computer technology. By providing new research and ideas, it brings the reader up to date on how and why optics is likely to be used in next generation computers and at the same time explains the unique advantage optics enjoys over conventional electronics and why this trend will continue. Covered are basic optical concepts such as mathematical derivations, optical devices for optical computing, optical associative memories, optical interconnections, and optical logic. Also suggested are a number of research activities that are reinforcing the trend toward optics in computing, including neural networks, the software crisis, highly parallel computation, progress in new semiconductors, the decreasing cost of laser diodes, communication industry investments in fiber optics, and advances in optical devices. Exercises, solutions sets, and examples are provided. ... Read more

Product Description
Despite the tremendous advances in performance enabled by modern architectures, there are always new applications and demands arising that require ever-increasing capabilities. Keeping up with these demands requires a deep-seated understanding of contemporary architectures in concert with a fundamental understanding of basic principles that allows one to anticipate what will be possible over the system's lifetime. Advanced Computer Architectures focuses on the design of high performance supercomputers with balanced coverage of the hardware, software structures, and application characteristics.

This book is a timeless distillation of underlying principles punctuated by real-world implementations in popular current and past commercially available systems. It briefly reviews the basics of uniprocessor architecture before outlining the most popular processing paradigms, performance evaluation, and cost factor considerations. This builds to a discussion of pipeline design and vector processors, data parallel architectures, and multiprocessor systems. Rounding out the book, the final chapter explores some important current and emerging trends such as Dataflow, Grid, biology-inspired, and optical computing. More than 220 figures, tables, and equations illustrate the concepts presented.

Based on the author's more than thirty years of teaching and research, Advanced Computer Architectures endows you with the tools necessary to reach the limits of existing technology, and ultimately, to break them. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the greatest challenges faced by designers of digital systems is optimizing the communication and interconnection between system components. Interconnection networks offer an attractive and economical solution to this communication crisis and are fast becoming pervasive in digital systems. Current trends suggest that this communication bottleneck will be even more problematic when designing future generations of machines. Consequently, the anatomy of an interconnection network router and science of interconnection network design will only grow in importance in the coming years.

This book offers a detailed and comprehensive presentation of the basic principles of interconnection network design, clearly illustrating them with numerous examples, chapter exercises, and case studies. It incorporates hardware-level descriptions of concepts, allowing a designer to see all the steps of the process from abstract design to concrete implementation.

·Case studies throughout the book draw on extensive author experience in designing interconnection networks over a period of more than twenty years, providing real world examples of what works, and what doesn't.

·Tightly couples concepts with implementation costs to facilitate a deeper understanding of the tradeoffs in the design of a practical network.

·A set of examples and exercises in every chapter help the reader to fully understand all the implications of every design decision. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

only presents very simple cases, not always sound in fundamentals
I had high expectations for this book given the table of contents.In particular, I was interested in chapters on arbitration, flow control, live lock and dead lock.These are topics that I have not seen comprehensive coverage on elsewhere.What I found was that most of the text is spent on describing very simple cases, in a wordy manner that actually makes the easy cases harder to understand.The book stops as soon as there is the least bit of complexity.This is very disappointing as it doesn't even mention the limited cases that I'm aware of.It certainly falls very short of providing a comprehensive survey of known complexities in these subjects.

On the topic of flow control, I was appalled to see it described as a way to utilize existing buffer resources as if the number of buffers are decided ahead of time, independent of flow control when the number of buffers are actually an integral part of flow control decisions.I was further shocked to see diagrams that only show one node in explaining flow control when flow control is fundamentally about communication between two nodes.Zooming in on one of the two nodes is really missing the basics of flow control.

As a result, I cannot recommend this book.

Outstanding text for practitioners and academics alike
This book provides the reader with a comprehensive text on interconnection networks. Dally and Towles provide a thorough treatment of the impact of system packaging, topology, and routing algorithms on the overall system performance. Numerous examples of systems from both industry (Cray, SGI) and academia (MIT J-Machine) are provided to illustrate the concepts in practice. Every computer architect should own this book, whether they are doing on-chip networks, IP routers, network processors, or large-scale supercomputers.

An excellent text
This book is the "Hennessy & Patterson" for interconnection networks area. The book covers almost all aspects of theoritical and practical issues involved in designing interconnection networks. The concepts are presented in very simple fashion. A very well written exahaustive text. Must read for any computer architect! ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
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

*For the Revised Printing, Appendix A appears in the printed book rather than on the CD. This is the only change.
*Explains the latest benchmarking software including SPEC CPU2000 suite for processors, SPEC Web99 for web servers, and EEMBC for embedded systems
*Features the latest developments of the Intel IA-32 architecture as well as the Power PC 604, the AMD Opteron Memory, and the Intrinsity FastMATH processor.
*Compares MIPs assembler code to both C and Java ... Read more

Customer Reviews (40)

Great book, poor kindle version.
This book is a *must have* for any student or profession at CS. I have the 2nd edition and I bought the Kindle edition of the 3rd. The book is great, but a lot of images are hard to see and understand at kindle version and I really dont know to (or if it possible) to access the content of the CD of the printed version. My tip: buy the printed version, but not the kindle one.

Great product, Super fast shipping A+++
my experience shows that companies should post more than just the state on the from location. this ended up shipping from a shop right down the street from me. although it had a price tag on it for $45, and I paid ~10. other than that, shipping was great and book was in excellent condition.

Good books and very cheap
I have to say this is the best deal I get from Amazon.com, only cost me 1 dollar and it is amazing cheap!

Not a bad deal
The book is in the condition described, except there is a little writing in the margins and stuff from previous owner. Otherwise, it was a perfect purchase. Fast shipping and good price =)

Comp Arch Book
It's the required textbook for my CA class, and I haven't looked at it yet. ... Read more

Product Description
The chief goal of this text is to familiarize students with the concepts that provide the basis for modern digital computers. It seeks a balance between an over emphasis on the details of a specific machine and the need to provide students with hands-on experience. The body of the text presents general principles; however, this presentation has been organized so that laboratory exercises, providing the necessary hands-on experience, can be easily integrated with the material in the book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good first couple of chapters, but skims over important stuff.
The first two chapters of this book are helpful. The first chaper talks about converting bases and the second chapter just gives you an introduction to logic design. These are the only two helpful chapters. What I really didn't like about this book was that they just talked about an very important topic briefly. This was the RTL(Register Transfer Language). They talked about this in 1-2 pages even though the book needed to go into much more detail in this important topic.

I also didn't like how the book never posted solutions to ANY of its excercise problems that they gave to the reader at the end of the chapter. The book could have atleast given solutions to the odd ones.

But in defense of this book, they did do a good job of explaining instruction overlap(chapter 4) and the one, two, three adress architectures and the Load/Store architecture of Risc. This is all in chapter 4, so I would say that this is also a good chapter to read.

But in regards to opcodes, instructions, how many opcode bits and are in each type of adress architecture, memory banks, RTL, Its very poor. This was supposed to be explained in Chapter 3, but the author does a horrendous job of explaining it. If your taking a class alongside this book, you better hope that you have an instructor who clearly explains these types of concepts to you.

In conclusion, this book has its good moments(Chapter 1, 2, 4), but it skims over really important concepts.

Hi Guys!
I have the 1992 edition.This book is not for the Joe Blow 'computer professional'.It is intensely academic. This book is NOT in 'lay' terms...also, it often glazes over EXTREMELY complex topics.The level of diction for this book isfairly high.Not recommended for your dime store MCSE.

Provides a nice overview but not much depth
This book provides a overview of how the computer operates internally, but lacks in real world or specific examples.Many of the questions/examplesare overly generic because the author tries to cover many platforms insteadof just one or two major platforms. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is for business professionals interested in learning techniques for managing change in technology driven companies.It focuses on bridging business and I/T strategies through the Enterprise Architecture function.Unlike many books about I/T, i ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Excellent I/T Architecture Book
This is a truly wonderful book. The author distilled his nearly 30 years of I/T experience into this book. It is also a practical book and architecture management personal will find valuable information from the book.For example, chapter 2 discussed Principle-Based Architecture and presented various architecture principles; further more, the author presented a practical Architecture Governance Model that consists of some specialized groups such as Architecture Steering Committee and Architecture Review Board etc. to ensure these principles are followed across the enterprise.

Technical person will also find this is an excellent book to read. For most developers and architects, they may know technical aspect very well within their working domain, however, outside their domain they may not know as well or do not know. This book covers different architecture domains such as Application architecture, Information architecture, Network architecture, Platform Architecture etc. After reading this book, you will have a very good over all understanding of I/T Architecture. I highly recommend this book for leader of I/T architecture department as well as technical architects.

Excellent Book for CIO's, I/T Professionals and I/T Architects
This is a "must read" book that provides a wonderful insight on how to position and apply Architecture within to a corporate IT enterprise. Rick uses his practical experiences to clearly articulate the important role in which architecture plays, how to establish guiding principles, govern, and develop/utilize an architectural framework to help you improve your overall business. Chapt 1-3 is a nice discussions for CIOs which helps you assess the importance and maturity of architectue and how it ties ot the business. Chapt4 provides a good layered framework which the latter explain in much more technical detail.

Each chapter is wonderfully summarized--- this helps to you understand the major points that you should come away with.

This book is a must read for all CIOs, business I/T professionals and IT architects ... Read more

Product Description
For a hundred years, pencil, pen, markers, and watercolor have been the principal tools of representation for landscape architects and urban planners. Today, those hand-powered aids have been replaced by computers and Computer-aided design (CAD). Digital Drawing for Landscape Architects bridges the gap between the traditional analog and the new digital tools and shows you how to apply timeless concepts of representation to enhance your design work in digital media.

Building on the tried-and-true principles of analog representation, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture explores specific techniques for creating landscape design digitally. It explains the similarities and differences between analog and digital rendering, and then walks you through the steps of creating digitally rendered plans, perspectives, and diagrams. You’ll explore:

• Computing Basics
• Raster and vector images
• Setting up the document
• Base imagery and scaling
• Hand-drawn linework and diagrams
• Text, leaders, and page layout
• Color, shading, and textures
• Creating a section elevation
• Perspective drawing
• Techniques for using the newest versions of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat as well as older versions

With more than 500 full-color drawings and photographs alongside proven techniques, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architects will help you enhance your skills though a unique marriage of contemporary methods with traditional rendering techniques. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Strong Book For Digital Workflow
Concise, well-written book that bridges the gap for new learners and more seasoned digital renderers. Cantrell and Michaels offer a fantastic overview of how to improve workflow speed and the finished product. Some underlying knowledge of the Adobe Suite is necessary, but will still be beneficial for those new to importing .pdfs from CAD to Photoshop, Illustrator,etc. Loads of helpful images, well-described how-to's, and tricks that will give your projects an extremely impressive look. Minor quibble, a couple of sections feel "rushed" toward the end as far as the steps. For instance, the collage section feels like it could have had a bit more detail and polish like some of the earlier sections. Again, minor, minor issue. Otherwise, go for it without regret. For Landscape Arch students, this is a must. Consider it the digital version of Grant Reid's Landscape Graphics.

Great Book!
Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture gives you a good understanding of how to use a variety of programs in conjunction with each other.It gives good examples of what program to use for specific graphic presentations and does so in a very clear and concise way.Many of the techniques discussed can easily be applied to disciplines other than Landscape Architecture and I would highly recommend the book to anyone involved in creating digital graphic presentations for any of the design professions. I teach a course a course called "Integrated Computer Graphics" and I plan on using it for my main text.Well done!

Illustration For Landscape Architecture
Traditionally, landscape representation has been done with graphite pencil, watercolor, and other drawing implements. This book shows how this process can be made much more efficient by utilizing both vector-based and raster-based illustration software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, 3DStudioMax, Rhino, and Google SketchUp. It provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to use these software in conjunction with CAD to create visually compelling illustrations.

Topics covered include (software used in parentheses): Tiling Aerial Photographs (Photoshop), Creating Entourage (Photoshop), Linework (Illustrator), Creating Textures (Photoshop), Perspective Illustration (Sketchup, 3DStudioMax, Photoshop), Camera Match 3D Object to Site Photo (3DStudioMax), and Atmospheric Perspective (3DStudioMax, Maya).

Every step of a process is clearly explained and accompanied by very high quality illustrations. Whether you're a student or a landscape architect, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture will serve as a very helpful how-to guide on creating beautifully rendered illustration of your plans.

A great book for its purpose.
I gave this book to my roommate who is a Landscape Architect and she had nothing but great things to say about it.Its very useful and she was already familiar with it as it is an industry standard.

Good basic overview of using Photoshop and Illustrator for rendering from CAD, plus SketchUp for perspective
This is a great book for the right person, but let's be clear on what it does: It helps you take the .PDF files you export from your CAD program and import them into Photoshop or Illustrator to render them for presentation. It also walks you through using Sketch-up and 3D Max to create perspective or 3-D style renderings.

This is not for the average design-build contractor who wants to add a little spice to his or her drawings, because all of the techniques outlined assume you want to spend a decent amount of time tinkering with the plans. If you need some drag n drop or fast click color, I'd suggest using Dynascape with the color module or one of the other CAD-based programs that do that for you fairly simply. It's definitely not a book for homeowners.

Instead, this is for architects or designers who have enough budget in their project to allow for spending 4-8 hours or more creating colored digital renderings for presentation. This book assumes you're working with a CAD program and have the adobe suite of products, including Photoshop and illustrator. If you have both a CAD program and Photoshop at least, then this book will take you through the basic Photoshop activities you need to do to render your project for presentation without using those stinky chartpak markers.

If you are already proficient at Photoshop, this book won't teach you much that is new. The section on Sketch-up and 3D Max are small and fairly basic. But if you have gotten Photoshop and just aren't quite sure how to get started using it for this kind of rendering, then this will walk you through it perfectly.

The question you'll want to ask yourself is: "Do I want to learn ALL about Photoshop, or only how to render landscape plans in Photoshop?" If the answer to that is the second, then this book is exactly what you need. It does a great job of showing exactly how to do that. But if you want to learn Photoshop properly, then the techniques in this book aren't so specialized that a non-specific but thorough book on Photoshop wouldn't cover it. The strength of this book is that it is SO specific in showing exactly this one kind of rendering work and how to do every element of it.

This is a textbook format book and as such is hard to sit down and read for a stretch. Many books nowadays that are instructive take a more casual tone and don't bother stating things that should be obvious like textbooks often start out by doing. But the benefit of this textbook style of writing is that the authors are very thorough and take you through every action step by step. They have provided tons of screenshots and pictures of exactly what the menus look like and what your rendered drawings should look like at each stage. It's a very thorough book and if this is the kind of help you need, you won't regret buying this book. ... Read more

Product Description

As a developer, you are aware of the increasing concern amongst developers and site architects that websites be able to handle the vast number of visitors that flood the Internet on a daily basis. Scalable Internet Architecture addresses these concerns by teaching you both good and bad design methodologies for building new sites and how to scale existing websites to robust, high-availability websites. Primarily example-based, the book discusses major topics in web architectural design, presenting existing solutions and how they work. Technology budget tight? This book will work for you, too, as it introduces new and innovative concepts to solving traditionally expensive problems without a large technology budget. Using open source and proprietary examples, you will be engaged in best practice design methodologies for building new sites, as well as appropriately scaling both growing and shrinking sites. Website development help has arrived in the form of Scalable Internet Architecture.

Customer Reviews (18)

Great primmer on scalability planning
This book is great, especially as a starting point to learning about scalability planning.It takes a fairly academic approach to all relevant subjects and can quickly get anyone caught up to speed.

I do recommend "The Art of Capacity Planning: Scaling Web Resources" as a follow-up for continuing your education in this subject and taking these skills to a more proactive plan/deploy method.

Execlent for understanding the issues with scaling a web site
An excellent book on what the issues are with building web site that scale to large numbers of servers. Written more for a programmer than a systems administrator but not to heavy on the programming side to bog it down. It is really good about organizing the different aspects of scalability and explaining important concepts. For example the difference between caching static content and caching data used in generating a web page. An excellent read. not too long, not too much detail. It made me think about web sites and clustering in a new way

Execllent for understanding the issues with scaling a web site
An excellent book on what the issues are with building web site that scale to large numbers of servers. Written more for a programmer than a systems administrator but not to heavy on the programming side to bog it down. It is really good about organizing the different aspects of scalability and explaining important concepts. For example the difference between caching static content and caching data used in generating a web page. An excellent read. not too long, not too much detail. It made me think about web sites and clustering in a new way.

Towards automatic, self-managed operations
I bought this book on recommendations from others and I have to agree that it is fantastic. Don't let the 2006 publication date fool you into avoiding it for something more current. The advise given is based on real experience gained initially during the dot com era but it is as relevant today as then. The best part of the book is its advocacy and practical examples of the Spread group communications toolkit. Why solve a problem with a vendor's expensive high performance single point of failure solution when well knowledgeable use of internet infrastructure and peer to peer communication better solves it. Plus, you have a powerful tool to aid you moving further towards automatic, self-managed operations.

A worthwhile read, a disappointing experience
First and foremost, chapter 10 should be an Appendix.This was a horrible ending to what seemed to be a promising discussion on horizontal scaling for any system/network engineer or astute systems engineer.

Clear and concise, then incoherent and grammatically challenged, this book requires constant read backs leaving the reader with a sense of a diminished level of reading comprehension.

Fortunately there are some very good real world discussions on horizontal scaling, distributed caching, and eliminating single points of failure in your design.

Unfortunately the book was a long documentary on the author's Spread utility/program/solution and the last chapter is dedicated to writing a module for Spread.Completely out of band with regards to actual high performance clustered environments where the author's solution is likely scarce in popularity.

I do appreciate his coverage of logging.Despite my rating, I don't regret the first nine chapters. ... Read more

Product Description

• SOA is the most important initiative facing IT today and is difficult to grasp; this book demystifies the complex topic of SOA and makes it accessible to all those people who hear the term but aren't really sure what it means
• This team of well-respected authors explains that SOA is a collection of applications that enables resources to be available to other participants in a network using any service-based technology
• Examines how SOA enables faster and cheaper application development and how it offers reusable code that can be used across various applications
• Covers what SOA is, why it matters, how it can impact businesses, and how to take steps to implement SOA in a corporate environment

Customer Reviews (16)

Good Start
This is a good SOA start book
I recommend it to beginners
Easy to read and flows nicely

Good book for Starters
A very good book for anyone starting on SOA.I have bought this book for IBM 669 SOA Certification and it is helping me quite a bit.REcommend to others also

Not really worth the trouble
Not really worth the time to read (let alone the expense). Covers the basics but not well enough to make a lasting impression and is somewhat miss guided towards a vendors rather than practitioners view of Service-oriented Architecture.

I have found more useful information free on the web - just started out with Wikipedia and went from there.

A good starting point
If you are not an IT guy and for a long time you have been thinking that SOA is only related to IT, then this book is a good starting point to understand, and make others understand, that SOA has everything to do with business.

Using simple examples, this book will guide you through the different elements of SOA and will help you to understant it's potential.

A Good Book but Not for Dummies!
I like this book because it is easy to read and it explains basic SOA concepts. This book will help you understand the major concepts but it is not a book that can get you started building services, SOA infrastructure and middleware.

And it is obviously not for dummies!
... Read more

Product Description
The papers from the 2000 International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD 2000). They cover: fault simulation and ATPG at different level designs; improving CPU performance; logic circuit families; intelligent memory; processor microarchitecture; logic optimization; and more. ... Read more

Product Description
Focuses on the design and implementation of two classes of non-von Neumann computer architecture: those designed for functional and logical language computing. ... Read more

Product Description
This introductory text offers a contemporary treatment of computer architecture using assembly and machine language with a focus on software. Students learn how computers work through a clear, generic presentation of a computer architecture; a departure from the traditional focus on a specific architecture. A computer's capabilities are introduced within the context of software, reinforcing the software focus of the text. Designed for computer science majors in an assembly language course, this text uses a top-down approach to the material that enables students to begin programming immediately and to understand the assembly language, the interface between hardware and software. The text includes examples from the MIPS RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture and an accompanying software simulator package simulates a MIPS RISC processor (the software does not require a MIPS processor to run). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

new edition has not been printed
Based on the author's review I tried to get a copy of a newer edition than 1993.According to Oxford Press, the newer edition is in press but has not been printed and they have no publication date available.

Author comment (admittedly biased rating)
To be fair, the first printing of this book did have a LOT of errors.But that was in 1993!And some of those copies are still circulating, especially in Madison, WI.But I only know of about three errors in the latest printing, and they are all very subtle.

Frustrating Errors
Having taken the class at UW-Madison for which this book was written, and my instructor being Karen Miller (one of the authors), even she admitted to the great number of errors.It is highly frustrating to open the book read something, and then wonder, "Gee, is this correct?"Constantly referring to Karen's list of webpage errors was frustrating.Chapter 9 was completely re-written and made available to us in PDF format because the book's version was poor.

I'm shocked that the university is still using the text.Though it was only slightly easier to follow the material since the author was also my instructor, she also seemed annoyed that through some departmental/political/publishing snafu that they are still using the text 10yrs later.

Avoid this book if you have a choice.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
THIS BOOK STARTS OUT WELL, AND THEN DEGENERATES INTO ERRORS, ERRORS, ERRORS, AND MORE ERRORS.THE CONCEPTS IN THE LAST FEW CHAPTERS ARE EXPLAINED TERRIBLY.I FEEL GENUINELY SORRY FOR ANYBODY TRYING TO GET ANINTRO TO COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS BY READING THIS BOOK.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
THIS BOOK STARTS OUT WELL, AND THEN DEGENERATES INTO ERRORS, ERRORS, ERRORS, AND MORE ERRORS.THE CONCEPTS IN THE LAST FEW CHAPTERS ARE EXPLAINED TERRIBLY.I FEEL GENUINELY SORRY FOR ANYBODY TRYING TO GET ANINTRO TO COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS BY READING THIS BOOK. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Excellent book, Very useful reference
Excellent book, Very useful reference

Rather than being a boring book , Beautiful Architecture, is a well-written and very informative collection of interesting example from real life that should be known by anyone with interest in this field. Even if the systems presented in the book are on different platforms, using totally different technologies, and developed in different periods of time, all share some importantaspects related to the architecture.

The book is divided in five parts. The first part is a general presentation on what is an architecture and an example of two software systems, very similar from many aspects like size, appliance, programming language, operating system and even so, one was aborted and one is used in our days. The first one was abandoned mainly because the lake of the design from the binging,hard to add new features, and the amount of effort required to rework, refactor, and correct the problems with the code structure had become prohibitive. The second one, is still in production, still being extended and changed daily. The actual architecture for the second one it is remarkably similar to the original design, with a few notable changes, and a lot more experience to prove the design was right.

The second part is about the "Enterprise Application Architecture". In this part is 4 systems are presented: the scaling problem faced in case of a massively multiplayer online games, the grow of a system for image storage and retrieval for retail offerings of portraits, an example resource-oriented system in which is presented the importance of Web Services in an enterprise application, and in the last chapter the Facebook application system is presented, and how the Facebook Platform was created.

Part three is about System Architecture. It starts by presenting the Xen virtualization platform that has grown from an academic research effort to major open source project. A large part of its success is due to it being released as open source. Then a fault tolerance system is presented, by reviewing the Tandem Operating System designed between 1974 and 1976 and shipped between 1976 and 1982. Chapter nine presents JPC, an x86 PC Emulator in Pure Java. Another Java implementation is presented in chapter ten: Jikes RVM is a successful research virtual machine, providing performance close to the state-of-the-art in a flexible and easy-to-extend manner.

In the fourth part, the End-User Application Architectures are presented. The GNU Emacs text editor architecture is described, and also a comparison with other software like Eclipse and Firefox is provided. Then the KDE project, one of the biggest Free Software, is presented in chapter twelve.

Languages and Architecture are presented in the last part of the book. This parts starts with a comparison between functional and object-oriented programming, continue with some examples of object-oriented programming and ends with some thoughts on beautiful buildings with problems.

From the beginning of a projectis very important to have a clear view of the architecture and technologies used, because after some iterations is really hard, or in some situation impossible, to change the entire architectures and in some cases ignoring the architecture can lead to a project fail. A good conclusion for the book would be that: "An architecture influences almost everything that comes into contact with it, determining the health of the codebase and also the health of the surrounding areas."

Great idea, poor execution...
The book's idea is great, but the content is not really focused. For me Architecture is not about coding. Coding is about architecture. But some of the chapters focus too much on technicalities, making it, not only out of topic, but tedious. Not all the chapters are like that, but still it makes the book a bit unfocused and too technical for the average reader.

In order to really grasp the full experience from the book you will have to have very deep and low level of knowledge of several disciplines which is unlikely (but not impossible) for the majority of the readers.

In my overall opinion the book is a worthy read, the insight from experience is great and the introduction to some very important Open Source Projects can really prove useful.

Interesting idea, poor execution...too many cooks spoiled the broth
The book suffers from a "too many cooks" problem; it is a very timely book but lacks cohesion across chapters. I agree with the other reviewer that it has way too many pages about nothing. This is simply a good example of where each chapter is written by an "authority" on architecture but the chapters are disjointed and lack a consistent message. I loved the title, and idea behind the book, but it overpromises and underdelivers. But there are some redeeming features.

However, three chapters are excellent and make up for about a third of the forty dollars that I spent on this book. First, the preface and its discussion of architectural principles and properties is one of the best discussions of those topics. I have not seen that elsewhere. Chapter 1 ("what is architecture") and chapter 2 (a contrast between a system with a messy architecture with another with a thoughtfully designed one) are excellent. Unfortunately, all this interesting content stops on page 43 and very little worth the time reading the remaining 374 pages!

I hope that the publisher would come out with a shrunk down 72 pager condensed version of this book that is more like the substance I've come to expect from O'Rielly books.

This book is best checked out at your local library. I would instead recommend buying Jan Bosch's older but still unbeatable "Design and Use of Software Architectures" book.

The best I read so far, good 3 1/2 stars
The books is very solid written and covers the most recent architecture questions. Topics are well laid, very nice covered, but... too many dry and boring words about nothing. Cut it in half, leave the most interesting part (usually the shortest one, towards the end of the topic) and woo-hoo! But for some reason (or was it the strange necessity to increase book in size?!) it is talking a lot about nothing. Too much theory. I would appreciate much better the book for professionals only, no beginners, please, create a separate intro book for them. And cover only the best part for non-beginners. That would be the my "wish book". But this one is not it yet. I was thinking about 4 stars, but 3.5 is much more appropriate, I think. Authors did a great job, anyway.

Good topics, Half baked
Beautiful Architecture is a collection of articles about architecture.
The books starts with a "What is architecture" article (AMAZING! almost any book about architecture has that! can't we finally agree and deprecate this discussion?!)
Other articles arrange by topics: enterprise (server) architecture, client architecture, etc...

What really annoyed me while reading this book, and lowered two stars for it, is the repeating rhythm of the articles:
They start slow and punctuality (That's ok), getting warmer, getting into a really interesting point and puff - suddenly the article ends.
It's like making many preparations (warming the oven, preparing raw materials), putting the cake in, but closing it over before the cake is done. Shame!

Overall I would buy this book to get leads to new areas, not to really cover it. ... Read more

Product Description

Featuring a strong emphasis on the fundamentals underlying contemporary logic design using hardware description languages, synthesis, and verification, this book focuses on the ever-evolving applications of basic computer design concepts with strong connections to real-world technology. Treatment of logic design, digital system design, and computer design. Ideal for self-study by engineers and computer scientists.

Customer Reviews (33)

Book arrived on time and in good condition
This book arrived quickly and in the condition which was specified ( good )
I am not reviewing the book I am simply acknowledging that it arrived on time and in good condition

Very succinct book, helpful diagrams, great as a logic design text too
Although this book was for my Computer Organization and Design class, the first chapters seem to be excellent for a logic design course. I still use it in industry to review those fundamental concepts.

As far as the later chapters, our professor presented slides with diagrams from the book and text related to the textbook that was very succinct and easy to understand.

One of the last chapters - which integrated memory, buses, a microprocessor, microinstructions, select lines with control signals, muxes, and other design components - basically gives the student the big-picture understanding of how a computer works (it's been a while since I've dealt with this, so forgive me if any of the terms are wrong).

With that knowledge in hand, you can easily move into a computer architecture course and/or lab-intense digital processor design course, and be able to design and implement a processor, because you understand how a processor takes an assembly instruction, why the instruction is in the form it's in, and how the processor output's it result.

Worst textbook I've ever been forced to use.
This is by far the worst textbook I have ever had to use. Nothing is explained clearly or concisely, and the few examples the are (if you can call them that) are either overly complicated or completely useless. My frustration was only compounded by the fact that the professor did not actually teach the course but relied solely on reading to us from this text. In fact HE could not even solve the problems in the text with the given information. Readers beware: stay aware from this book!

It isn't worth the money; even if you get a discount.
I will try and keep the comments short, although the list of what is wrong with this book is quite long.First and foremost, after reading eight chapters of this book I have continually found that the author obviously expects the reader to have previous knowledge of the topics to which they refer.A book which has the word "Fundamentals" in the title implies that the book is intended for readers who are not versed in the topic.

The use of examples is limited.The authors should keep in mind that examples are very useful when explaining a complex concept.This is a fundamental reason for a variety of products such as the Unified Modeling Language.Putting a complex concept in visual form makes it easier to understand (visualize).The authors present complex topics with no example of the practical application.

Chapter two is supposed to cover the boolean algebra that is required to design digital logic circuits.If this book is for beginners ("Fundamentals") a more in depth treatment of boolean algebra is needed.That which is given in chapter two doesn't even qualify as a refresher, in my opinion.

The examples should be checked to ensure they are correct.On page 139 in chapter three a (Example 3-9) an electrical control for a vehicle is used as an example.The objective of the example is to show the different states of a vehicles radio, lights, and power windows based on whether or not the ignition is on.On page 139 the enabling input is referred to as "IG" (IGnition).On the following page it is referred to as "IS" (Ignition Switch).Since this book deals with logic design, and a switch could be referring to some type of integrated circuit, and the enabling input was referred to as IG on the previous page, this could get confusing.In fact, I'm confused and I'm writing this.There are more examples that have the same type problem.

My biggest complaint is the references made in the book.In short, if I am reading chapter eight it is very annoying to be referred to a truth table in chapter two and a logic diagram in chapter five in order to work a problem in chapter eight.

I have a passion for logic design and tried extremely hard to give the author the benefit of the doubt and continue reading this book in order to enhance my knowledge.Despite my passion, I have turned my back on this book.If you are thinking about purchasing this book you might consider waiting for some serious revisions.

This book seems as though it was thrown together and I can't help but wonder how it made it to a fourth edition.

Review of Logic and Computer design fundamentals
very useful and insightful book for the Micro-computer architecture class I'm currently taking.Relatively straight forward and easy to understand.Some errors in diagrams, or small lack of additional details does occur. ... Read more