Computer Organization and Design MIPS Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) 5th Edition

I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this textbook.I'm currently at university, and I took a class in Computer Organization this semester. I was definitely unfamiliar with the low-level aspects of Computer Science, so needless to say I was a bit intimidated. However, this textbook thoroughly prepared me for my exams, and I relied on this textbook more than I have any other text for any other class. Not only did it prepare me, but I feel that I have learned more about Computer Science from this textbook than I have from any other.I've seen some other reviews complain about typos, but I can usually overlook those. There are only two colors in the book (blue and black), but this is obviously to keep prices down (see below). Sometimes I found myself reading the same passages over and over again because I had trouble understanding what the author meant. I definitely get a sense that this edition was a bit rushed, as both the authors have demanding jobs outside of writing textbooks.I also have a serious issue with the way I couldn't find ANY answers anywhere to the problems in the book. It seems like standard practice to have the odd or even-numbered solutions in the back of the book or online, but I could not locate any. That's really my only complaint about this text, all the other issues I can excuse in some way.One of the most important points about this textbook is its price. You can easily pick this up for less than $40, which is pretty much a steal compared to some $100 or $200 textbooks. In light of the price, I can excuse the few areas where the cut corners to reduce printing prices.

Used for a college course. Would recommend to anyone who needs it. Useful information and arrived quickly

Got this as reference material for my Introduction to Computer Architecture and Organization course at university. Computer Architecture and Organization is a very, very interesting topic for those in electronics based engineering as well as computing fields as a whole, and this book attempts to delve into that very deep subject.The book is well written, and has many diagrams, tables, charts, and definitions, making it a very good book in my opinion. It was fairly simple to follow, although the subject matter is not simple. The writers seem to do a pretty good job of explaining everything for beginners (I can't speak from an experienced perspective). While the book was not required for the course, I did use it from time to time to brush up on the topics covered in class in a bit of a different way than what I was getting from the lecture, in the hopes of better retention. I believe there are practice problems throughout the book (although I was never required and didn't look at them).All in all, I think this book does as good of a job as it can with the subject matter, and conveys it well to beginners in the area. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.

There is not much more to add to what others have written. It's a great introductory-to-intermediate level book on computer architecture and the hardware-software interface, rooting itself in the MIPS instruction set architecture to develop and exemplify its conceptual framework. As others have noted, there are a considerable number of typos throughout the book, and the binding and print quality could be better, all of which do combine to detract from the quality somewhat, but these imperfections do not ultimately diminish the value of the content, which is my primary emphasis when evaluating learning material.

This is the text for a class I'm teaching this Spring so I purchased the Kindle version to mark up and make some notes. Wrong.First, Kindle "navigation" is pretty much useless when detailed discussions that reference figures appear many pages before and after the actual figure. There is no useable way to flip between the text and relevant figure and the ability to see the figure and text at the same time is apparently never going to be considered, much less actually happen.Second, and most heinous flaw, is the inability to zoom in on figures using Kindle for PC. To begin, many Kindle figures are quite literally unreadable. See Figure 1.17 for example.Third - I'll quit now before I get started on mis-guided attempts to 'protect' copyrights that in fact encourage circumvention.I'm incensed that Amazon would foist this drek off on students who are most likely trying to stretch limited funds and provide themselves access across multiple devices to match their study needs.

This book is very useful for beginners who want to understand the software design of hardware as I am a computer science major. However, as I read through the book, there are many errors, typos, and inconsistencies in the book. As well, I think the book should provide more examples because one example is not enough especially if the user is dealing with multiple scenarios. The readability is good as font and size are easy on the eyes. One thing to be cautious is that a friend of mine bought this same new book from Amazon too, but her's page unravel from the book bindings as she kept flipping the book. I was very careful when I flipped the pages, so it was intact.

It came in great shape, in the time needed too. I was very happy with the purchase. It is not marked up.

Excellent Entertaining computer book. I bought this for class but am happily reading it for my own enjoyment. It doesn't start off super technical. It starts with talking about real world concepts and then eases into the technical stuff. Has a very good format for people who aren't computer science geniuses.