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

The content of the book is supposed to be good, informative and educational, but i have a few complains that sometimes drive me beyond angry.1. The quality of the writing for the main part of book and the appendices are on different level. While the main part of the part reads better, feel more clearly organized. The content of the appendices make you feel like they are stacking paragraphs of words together, squishing hard and too lazy to even divide it into paragraphs. The thought processes is chaotic, the parts that are so easy to understand is being repeated over and over and over and over again, make you want to tell the author that I am not stupid, I can read the picture. Whereas when it comes to the need to explain something so critical, the book just runs over, as if nothing is happening there, and the read can read the author's mind of what s/he is thinking. Reading the appendices it makes you feel like whoever wrote the appendices want to make you feel stupid by repeating the obvious, while neglecting the key steps.2. The book feels like a 5th edition with a few chapter inserted into the old one and published as 6th edition. I mean, seriously, do you even proof read the book, the appendices are crazy, making references to pages that does not even exist, and it is obvious it is referencing to pages most likely from 5th edition. It is so bad, i gave up going back referencing what they want me to see, because I simply just can't find it. And obviously the book is pieced together without any proof reading, because it is also referencing figures that does not exist.3. The printing is so bad, that there are many places I can see that the printing is close to the edge of the page, it looks so awkward. And also seriously the layout, the publisher feels cheap that they put a figure/picture 1/2 pages down the road, yes, I would love to see the figure you are talking about preferably on the same page, that is called inline pictures, I don't want to flip back ad forth just to see what you are trying to talk about.I am giving it 3 starts, because it is better than nothing. And also out of the respect to the two authors who are supposedly be the pioneers in this field. And also because it is not the worse textbook I have ever read. It is not at the level that is completely unreadable. And to all fairness, there are some good written chapters where the author's thought process were clear and concise. Between the badly written part and the easy to digest part, I can clearly tell it is written by two complete people.

I don't review textbooks for coursework often, but "Computer Organization and Design MIPS Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface" was incredibly helpful. It is well organized, detailed, and thorough. I especially appreciated the addition of the insert at the front of the book that listed all the MIPS instructions, opcodes, registers, etc. I recommend having this book for your course if you need it, and if you plan on doing a lot of assembly after coursework, I recommend purchasing it.

Page numbers do not appear in the Kindle version. If your instructor assigns readings by specifying pages like mine does, you will be completely screwed because the pages do not even come close to matching up nor is there a set offset for you to figure out page numbers.

i failed this class :"(

I owned the first edition and bought this book to see how much architecture has progressed. Some diagrams are as-is from first editions but the case studies are more relevant to current designs. Haven't finished the whole book and I use it as a reference.

I was excited to read it but then....I think amazon should have padding like bubble wraps for example. Because the book was provably getting banged up against the walls of the box

Everything is explained in a really easy way. Even a 5th grader can understand it 😀