References and Recommended Texts

• Reference: Specification of the PeANUt Computer
  2005, Department of Computer Science FEIT ANU. Distributed to COMP2300 students.
  (The 2006 reading brick is exactly the same as the 2005 brick.)

  How to get it: (TO BE CONFIRMED) Pay your money to the cashier at Manning Clark between 9.30am and 4.30pm before Friday 3th March 2005. Cost is $4. You will be given a receipt, which you then take to the DCS office to be issued with your brick.

• Textbook: The choice of textbooks will be further discussed in the first lecture. Basically:
  • C Programming: If you have no experience in C, then we would strongly recommend that you purchase a textbook on C as your first priority. The recommended text by Afzal is a good basic introduction, although you could also use other C text books.If you have some C experience then you can "survive" by using C reference materials that are available on line - although even then it is sometimes more convenient to have a textbook at hand.
  • Computer Systems:Bryant and O'Hallaron is the recommended text for describing computer system architectures. You do not HAVE to buy this book, but we think it is excellent and you will not regret having a copy (we hope!). We will not directly work from this book, although we will make reference to it and possibly direct you to read parts of this text in your assignments. To receive a high distinction in this course, it will be expected that you have followed up on some of these leads - basically that you have "read around the course". You could probably do this, however, by just borrowing it from the library from time to time.

• Recommended texts
  • Computer Systems: A Programmers Perspective
    by Randal E Bryant and David O'Hallaron, 2003, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-178456-0.
    Available from Coop Bookshop and ANU Library.

  • Pure C Programming
    by Amir Afzal, 1999, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-130840703-7. Available from Coop Bookshop and ANU Library.
    With lots of examples and exercises, source codes on disk included.
    

• Possible alternative texts
  • The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture
    by Linda Null and Julia Lobur, 2003, Jones and Bartlett, ISBN 0-7637-0444-X.

  • Structured Computer Organization
    by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 1998 (4th edition), Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-095990-1.

  • Computer Organization
    by Carl Hamacher, Zvonko Vranesic and Safwat Zaky, 2002 (5th edition), McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-112218-14.

  • Computer Organization and Architecture
    by William Stallings, 1999 (5th edition), Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-08129403.

  • Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach
    by John L. Hennessey and David A. Patterson, 2003 (3rd edition), Morgan Kaufmann, ISBN 1-55860-724-2.

  • C Programming Made Simple
    by Conor Sexton, 1998, made Simple Books, ISBN 0-7506-3244-5.

  • The C Programming Language
    by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, 1988, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-110362-8. Available from Coop Bookshop and ANU Library.
    From the developers of C, not an introductory programming manual, rather a reference book.

Last modified: Thu Feb 9 11:18:31 EST 2006