Introduction to computing systems : from bits and gates to C and beyond Upplaga 2

This book is based on the premise that starting with a high level programming language is not the best approach. The reason most students are unsuccessful using a programming language when they encounter it in their first course is because, they are forced to memorize a lot of technical details without having any idea why these details are necessary. That is, they do not understand the basic underpinnings of how a computer works. From this basic notion evolves the motivated bottom-up approach found in Patt/Patel's "Introduction To Computing Systems", now in a second edition. The text starts with the logic structures and architecture of a computer and moves up to the application software that runs on it. Every treatment that purports to start at the bottom and work up begins with some abstraction. For Patt/Patel, that abstraction is the switch level behavior of an MOS transistor. From a very short treatment of that abstraction, the book covers in turn: Logic Gates, latches, logic structures (MUX, Decoder, Adder, gated latches), finally culminating in an implementation of memory.From there, the book moves on to the Von Neumann model of execution, then a simple computer (the LC-3), machine language programming, assembly language and how an assembler works, and then assembly language programming of the LC-3. The LC-3 treatment concludes with a substantial treatment of Physical I/O, including both polling and interrupt-driven I/O, the nature of traps and subroutine calls/returns. The book then moves to the high-level language C, covering recursion, pointers, and finally elementary data structures. The book establishes a foundation that every subsequent course in the computer science or computer engineering curriculum can benefit from and build on.