general

This book, probably the oldest of the Tanenbaum tetralogy, is in my opinion, the finest. This can double up as a first course in Operating Systems as well as Computer Architecture/Organization. I wish our school had used this as the textbook for our first year CO class. The material covered is fundamental yet very readable. Coverage of microprogramming(including some good stuff about x86 Micro Architecture), virtual memory, instruction set design, RISC v CISC, multicomputers. The tenet of this book is that a computer can be viewed as a series of layered machines, with chapters describing each machine. Overall a great value for anybody who wants to have a better idea of what goes under computer systems, without too much pains.

This well-written and often humorous (in the good sense) book is targeted for a freshman or sophomore in computer science or computer engineering. Following a few introductory chapters which give both a historical, conceptual, and structural overview of the computer, Tanenbaum partakes upon a semi-detailed introduction to the various "levels" of a computer, beginning with the digital-logic level (the actual hardware) and working up to both the operating-systems and assembly-language levels.

With respect to the digital-logic level, I thought he did well in introducing the student to the essential components (e.g. registers, ALU, Flip-Flops) without overburdening the student with design techniques such as Karnaugh maps, finite-state machines, etc..

However, by far the best part of the book seemed to be his explanation of the microarchitectural level, in which the relationship between memory, control, and datapath was fully explained. This chapter seemed to be where the "rubber met the road" in terms of showing the connection between programs and hardware. I would have preferred however if he had not introduced the IJVM language so early in this chapter, and had spent more time demonstrating microprograms. I know for a fact that many of my students seemed very confused about the difference between microinstructions and machine instructions.
Moreover, a majority of them found microprogramming with the Mic-1 very difficult if not impossible. More microprogram examples would probably have helped.

Finally, where as the later chapters on instruction sets and assembly language seemed very adequate introductory overviews, the operating-systems level seemed overly broad and of not much use. Certainly, a student should read his other book on OS to fully appreciate this all-too-important aspect of the computer.

In closing, I should mention that the Mic1 software also accompanies this text, and helps provide the student with a well-rounded education, in that they get some hands-on experience. The software and the well-written text make it an irresistable choice to use a first course in computer organization.

Ignore the other reviewers comments who are lazy and/or incapable of doing the end-chapter problems, it's amusing how many people repeated that(like parrots).
Some problems take more time and require compact understanding of concepts explained so far and some are easy, I used the book for an independent study course and it's readable, presenting a good deal of material, and includes quite funny comments in the text. I recommend it.