Terms and Conditions:

David L. Tarnoff wrote:This entire book is available as a free download under the title Computer Organization and Design Fundamentals e-Book. You can also visit http://faculty.etsu.edu/tarnoff/ntes2150.html in order to access chapter-by-chapter pdf's of the entire book scaled to 8½ ×11.

Book Excerpts:

This book is intended for computer science majors who want to study computer organization without having to understand computers at the transistor level.

Many books of computer organization assumed the reader had had some experience with electronics. Some books went so far as to use screen captures from oscilloscopes and other test equipment to describe circuit properties. It didn't take long to find out that this was a bad assumption to make when it came to students of computer science.

This book evolved from a collection of supplementary notes posted in internet by the author, an electrical engineering by training, to provide a lifeline for computer science students. With a help from Lulu.com, the online notes was compiled into a book and self-published.

So here it is, a textbook open to any audience who want to learn about the digital concepts of a computer. The author have tried to address topics such as analog to digital conversion, CRC's, and memory organization using practical terms and examples instead of the purely theoretical or technical approaches favored by engineers.

While this book alone will not provide the readers with the background necessary to begin designing and building contemporary computer circuits, nevertheless it will give the readers the tools needed to become better developers of software and computer systems by understanding the tools for logic design and the organization of the computer's internals.

The design concepts used for hardware are just as applicable to software. In addition, an understanding of hardware can be applied to software design allowing for improved system performance. This book can be used as a springboard to topics such as advanced computer architecture, embedded system design, network design, compiler design, or microprocessor design. The possibilities are endless.