The dramatic increase in computer performance has been extraordinary, but not for all computations: it has key limits and structure. Software architects, developers, and even data scientists need to understand how exploit the fundamental structure of computer performance to harness it for future applications. Ideal for upper level undergraduates, Computer Architecture for Scientists covers four key pillars of computer performance and imparts a high-level basis for reasoning with and understanding these concepts: Small is fast – how size scaling drives performance; Implicit parallelism – how a sequential program can be executed faster with parallelism; Dynamic locality – skirting physical limits, by arranging data in a smaller space; Parallelism – increasing performance with teams of workers. These principles and models provide approachable high-level insights and quantitative modelling without distracting low-level detail. Finally, the text covers the GPU and machine-learning accelerators that have become increasingly important for mainstream applications.

This book outlines a set of issues that are critical to all of parallel architecture--communication latency, communication bandwidth, and coordination of cooperative work (across modern designs). It describes the set of techniques available in hardware and in software to address each issues and explore how the various techniques interact.

With the new developments in computer architecture, fairly recent publications can quickly become outdated. Computer Architecture: Software Aspects, Coding, and Hardware takes a modern approach. This comprehensive, practical text provides that critical understanding of a central processor by clearly detailing fundamentals, and cutting edge design features. With its balanced software/hardware perspective and its description of Pentium processors, the book allows readers to acquire practical PC software experience. The text presents a foundation-level set of ideas, design concepts, and applications that fully meet the requirements of computer organization and architecture courses. The book features a "bottom up" computer design approach, based upon the author's thirty years experience in both academe and industry. By combining computer engineering with electrical engineering, the author describes how logic circuits are designed in a CPU. The extensive coverage of a micprogrammed CPU and new processor design features gives the insight of current computer development. Computer Architecture: Software Aspects, Coding, and Hardware presents a comprehensive review of the subject, from beginner to advanced levels. Topics include: o Two's complement numbers o Integer overflow o Exponent overflow and underflow o Looping o Addressing modes o Indexing o Subroutine linking o I/O structures o Memory mapped I/O o Cycle stealing o Interrupts o Multitasking o Microprogrammed CPU o Multiplication tree o Instruction queue o Multimedia instructions o Instruction cache o Virtual memory o Data cache o Alpha chip o Interprocessor communications o Branch prediction o Speculative loading o Register stack o JAVA virtual machine o Stack machine principles

In this remarkable book on computer design, long-known in the field and widely used in manuscript form, Gerrit A. Blaauw and Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. provide a definitive guide and reference for practicing computer architects and for students. The book complements Brooks' recently updated classic, The Mythical Man-Month, focusing here on the design of hardware and there on software, here on the content of computer architecture and there on the process of architecture design. The book's focus on architecture issues complements Blaauw's early work on implementation techniques. Having experienced most of the computer age, the authors draw heavily on their first-hand knowledge, emphasizing timeless insights and observations. Blaauw and Brooks first develop a conceptual framework for understanding computer architecture. They then describe not only what present architectural practice is, but how it came to be so. A major theme is the early divergence and the later reconvergence of computer architectures. They examine both innovations that survived and became part of the standard computer, and the many ideas that were explored in real machines but did not survive. In describing the discards, they also address why these ideas did not make it. The authors' goals are to analyze and systematize familiar design alternatives, and to introduce you to unfamiliar ones. They illuminate their discussion with detailed executable descriptions of both early and more recent computers. The designer's most important study, they argue, is other people's designs. This book's computer zoo will give you a unique resource for precise information about 30 important machines. Armed with the factors pro and con on the various known solutions to design problems, you will be better able to determine the most fruitful architectural course for your own design. 0201105578B04062001

The computing world is in the middle of a revolution: mobile clients and cloud computing have emerged as the dominant paradigms driving programming and hardware innovation. This book focuses on the shift, exploring the ways in which software and technology in the 'cloud' are accessed by cell phones, tablets, laptops, and more

This is a practical guide for software developers, and different than other software architecture books. Here's why: It teaches risk-driven architecting. There is no need for meticulous designs when risks are small, nor any excuse for sloppy designs when risks threaten your success. This book describes a way to do just enough architecture. It avoids the one-size-fits-all process tar pit with advice on how to tune your design effort based on the risks you face. It democratizes architecture. This book seeks to make architecture relevant to all software developers. Developers need to understand how to use constraints as guiderails that ensure desired outcomes, and how seemingly small changes can affect a system's properties. It cultivates declarative knowledge. There is a difference between being able to hit a ball and knowing why you are able to hit it, what psychologists refer to as procedural knowledge versus declarative knowledge. This book will make you more aware of what you have been doing and provide names for the concepts. It emphasizes the engineering. This book focuses on the technical parts of software development and what developers do to ensure the system works not job titles or processes. It shows you how to build models and analyze architectures so that you can make principled design tradeoffs. It describes the techniques software designers use to reason about medium to large sized problems and points out where you can learn specialized techniques in more detail. It provides practical advice. Software design decisions influence the architecture and vice versa. The approach in this book embraces drill-down/pop-up behavior by describing models that have various levels of abstraction, from architecture to data structure design.