This new text makes the design and implementation of computer systems accessible and understandable for the beginning engineering or computer science student. The authors take a "No Mysteries" approach to computer systems. They interrelate three different viewpoints to provide a unique understanding of the subject:the perspective of the logic designer, the assembly language programmer, and the computer architect.
The text has up-to-the-minute coverage of the latest developments in microprocessors, including ALU, pipelining, memory hierarchy, networks and the Internet. And, rather than focusing on a single type of architecture, Heuring and Jordan examine both CISC and RISC models at the ISA level using the unambiguous language of RTN (Register Transfer Notation), allowing for a more in-depth appreciation of different machine structures and functions.
Harry Jordan is Professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His interests in computer systems center on the interface between hardware and software. He has worked on the application and performance of multiple instruction stream computers, emphasizing the architecture and performance of such machines to the structure of parallel programming languages and algorithms. He developed one of the earliest high-level language extensions for parallel processing.
His most recent project was to build and operate an optical, stored program, digital computer. He developed designs using optical fiber for both data storage and interconnection, and successfully ran a prototype.