Todd Austin and colleague author new edition of book on structured computer organization

Professor Todd Austin has joined Andrew S. Tanenbaum of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to co-author the sixth edition of “Structured Computer Organization,” which has been published by Prentice Hall.

The book, specifically written for undergraduate students, is a best-selling guide that provides an accessible introduction to computer hardware and architecture. The new edition is a complete overhaul, and updates all of the examples and instruction sets to modern examples. The book now covers x86, ARM and AVR instruction sets, including their implementations in the Core i7, OMAP 4430 and ATmega168 architectures. Plus, the book includes lots of information on the latest trends in computing, including GPUs, gaming consoles, smartphones, and the Kinect and Wiimote.

This text will also serve as a useful resource for all computer professionals and engineers who need an overview or introduction to computer architecture. This book takes a modern structured, layered approach to understanding computer systems. It’s highly accessible – and it’s been thoroughly updated to reflect today’s most critical new technologies and the latest developments in computer organization and architecture. Painstaking research has made this one of the most accessible and accurate books available, maintaining the authors’ popular method of presenting a computer as a series of layers, each one built upon the ones below it, and understandable as a separate entity.

More information:

• Pearson webpage with hard copy and etextbook purchase information
• Amazon webpage with hard copy and etextbook purchase information

Prof. Austin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin in 1996. His research interests include computer architecture, reliable system design, hardware and software verification, and performance analysis tools and techniques. In 2002, he was a Sloan Research Fellow, and in 2007 he received the ACM Maurice Wilkes Award for “for innovative contributions in Computer Architecture including the SimpleScalar Toolkit and the DIVA and Razor architectures.” In addition to his work in academia, Prof. Austin is a co-founder of SimpleScalar LLC and InTempo Design LLC. He is the first to take credit (but the last to accept blame) for creating the SimpleScalar Tool Set, a popular collection of computer architecture performance analysis tools. Prior to joining the faculty at Michigan, Prof. Austin was a Senior Computer Architect in Intel’s Microcomputer Research Labs, a product-oriented research laboratory in Hillsboro, Oregon.