Daniel Page - Böcker

This easy-to-follow textbook offers a practically-driven approach to Computer Architecture in order for readers to gain a deeper understanding of the theory behind the topic. This comprehensive text uses Verilog (a Hardware Description Language) as a practical vehicle for modelling and experimenting with digital logic, and it is used as a bridge between the low-level, digital logic approach, and high-level systems architecture approach discussed throughout. Features: / Includes a wide-ranging introductory chapter, familiarising the reader with both the subject and the book's contents / Provides learning tools such as chapter overviews, summaries, example problems and answers throughout / Additional material such as example source code and electronic lecture slides are available via a complementary website This practical reader-friendly text has been written with undergraduates in mind, and is also suitable for self-study.

It is a great pleasure to write a preface to this book. In my view, the content is unique in that it blends traditional teaching approaches with the use of mathematics and a mainstream Hardware Design Language (HDL) as formalisms to describe key concepts. The book keeps the “machine” separate from the “application” by strictly following a bottom-up approach: it starts with transistors and logic gates and only introduces assembly language programs once their execution by a processor is clearly de ned. Using a HDL, Verilog in this case, rather than static circuit diagrams is a big deviation from traditional books on computer architecture. Static circuit diagrams cannot be explored in a hands-on way like the corresponding Verilog model can. In order to understand why I consider this shift so important, one must consider how computer architecture, a subject that has been studied for more than 50 years, has evolved. In the pioneering days computers were constructed by hand. An entire computer could (just about) be described by drawing a circuit diagram. Initially, such d- grams consisted mostly of analogue components before later moving toward d- ital logic gates. The advent of digital electronics led to more complex cells, such as half-adders, ip- ops, and decoders being recognised as useful building blocks.