Introduction To Programming And Computer Fundamentals

This textbook provides a basic introduction to the fundamentals of current computer designs. as the title suggests, the text skirts the border between hardware and software. after an overview of the subject and a discussion of performance, the book launches into technical matter such as instruction sets, how they are constrained by the underlying processor hardware, the constraints of their design, and more. an excellent critique of computer arithmetic methods leads to a high-level discussion on processor design. the book concludes with a brief discussion of the additional issues inherent in multiprocessing machines. the extremely lucid description is grounded in real ?world examples. The performance of software systems is dramatically affected by how well software designers understand the basic hardware technologies at work in a system. similarly, hardware designers must understand the far reaching effects their design decisions have on software applications. For readers in either category, this classic introduction to the field provides a deep look into the computer. it deminstrates the relationship between the software and hardware and focuses on the foundational concepts that are the basic for current computer design.