Alan Clements (1)

I really want to read a good book on computer architecture. This is not that book. Honestly, I couldn't even get through the first four chapters.

I take issue with the way the book is formatted. Starting with a discussion of all of digital logic (combinational and sequential) and THEN talking about binary? Discussing error codes and THEN talking about addition? Whatever happened to starting from the known and going to the unknown? From basic to complex?

Also, this book is in the fourth edition. I would assume that lots of copy editing has gone into this book in the 20 years between first and fourth presses. But there are typos, figures that make no sense, and a lot of inconsistencies in phraseology. The author uses many conflicting and confusing ways to discuss flip-flop edge transitions in chapter 3, which made it impossible for me to follow the discussion on using D flip-flops for bus arbitration. I spent so long flipping back and forth trying to understand what the author meant by a "rising" and a "falling" edge (I assumed it was self evident, but maybe the British use a different definition than Americans?). This wasn't even the worst part of the book, but by the time I got past this (and I didn't really ever understand it, I just gave up and decided to move on), I was too annoyed to even consider using this book to bolster my understanding of computer architecture.

Apparently my goal remains unfinished, waiting to find a better book to teach me what I want to learn.… (mehr)