Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, Global Edition

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Some book may show sales disclaimer such as "Not for Sale or Restricted in US" on the cover page but it is absolutely legal to use. CSAPP turned out to be a good find since it is aimed at the intersection of computer architecture, computers systems and OS. This is an easy to follow book that covers how computers work from the level of processors up to web servers. I read (by read, I mean read about 2/3 of the chapters, worked most in-chapter exercises, and completed one lab) this book as a largely self-taught software engineer and found the explanations of computer systems both clear and nuanced.

Being new in this area of CS, I had a hard time actually assessing whether I got sufficiently around the 'need-to-know' concepts (the answer is probably 'No'). He spent three years as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, and has been on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon since 1984. It's also somehow significantly longer, and the 'brain teasers' meant to reinforce learning are either redundantly easy or uselessly bizarre. There's multiple times they use idivq with 2 operands in earlier problems which I just ignored thinking they were silly mistakes. For five of those years he served as head of the Computer Science Department, and for ten of them he served as Dean of the School of Computer Science.Not having to deal with such caste boundaries, this book is able to show the student how virtual memory is brought to life. If I read a chapter from start to finish, absorbing every word, I could understand the material well enough, but it got so caught up in jargon and what-ifs that it was incomprehensible as a quick lookup guide. Students, if interested in purchasing this title with MasteringEngineering, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID.

The best-known example of his work is the Quake project, an endeavor involving a group of computer scientists, civil engineers, and seismologists who have developed the ability to predict the motion of the ground during strong earthquakes. The authors provide numerous real-world examples and case studies throughout the book, demonstrating how the concepts presented can be applied in real-world scenarios.Professor O’Hallaron works in the area of computer systems, with specific interests in software systems for scientific computing, data-intensive computing, and virtualization. He is a fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE and a member of both the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Using practical examples and problems the book walks the student through all the hardware and software knowledge that is required to understand how a program comes to life on a computer. I was not interested in and did not see any benefit for this book to touch on areas of system I/O, network programming and concurrency. This book will tell you that assembly is just another programming language, and nothing to shudder at the sight of.

Computer systems: A Programmer’s Perspective explains the underlying elements common among all computer systems and how they affect general application performance. A plethora of hardware features and a large set of software come together to make this simple magic possible. Probably didn't learn as much as CMU's course but it was a good enough "systematic" intro to systems. It's written for computer science students, and goes into a lot of detail about modern operating systems concepts such as virtual memory, processes, and signals.

Spanning across computer science themes such as hardware architecture, the operating system, and systems software, the Third Edition serves as a comprehensive introduction to programming. Having read for breadth and gleaned a low-resolution understanding of the topics, I imagine I will revisit this as-needed for deeper reference throughout my future studies and career (and have already encountered a couple real-world problems where this lower-level knowledge has helped me debug and find solutions). Although I didn't finish it, (picked it up as I needed along cs213) from the amount of content I see online from students from all over the world using it as a basis for understanding systems, it is a must read to understand systems.

Written from the programmer’s perspective, this book strives to teach readers how understanding basic elements of computer systems and executing real practice can lead them to create better programs. Virtual memory is an important concept, but sadly it gets short shrift in computer science education. Marred by imprecise and ambiguous language and a lack of coherent flow from subject to subject, this was probably my least favorite architecture book. being a good enough student to actually read and consume the textbook material is somewhat new to me, but this book made it easy.This book explains the important and enduring concepts underlying all computer systems, and shows the concrete ways that these ideas affect the correctness, performance, and utility of application programs. From bits to data representation (and its limits), to fricken assembly, to memory hierarchy and caches and everything with memory. It lays the groundwork for readers to delve into more intensive topics such as computer architecture, embedded systems, and cybersecurity. While the content is not too hard, the knowledge in here is definitely not attainable from random tutorials here and there on the web. I have only academic experience with C, yet was able to follow along well enough with the examples adequately.