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The Unabridged Pentium 4: LA32 Processor Genealogy (PC System Architecture Series)

By: Inc. Mindshare Tom Shanley
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Addison Wesley
ISBN: 032124656X
ISBN-13: 9780321246561
Released: 05 Aug 2004
RRP: £56.85
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

A very good book - By: , 19 Jun 2005
This is a very detailed book giving lots of information on the IA-32 architecture, from the 386 right up to the present day P4 Prescott. Although it doesn't go into instruction sets so much (that kind of stuff is easy to find on the 'net), it does cover pretty much alll other aspects of the Intel Processors, such as basic 386 demand-mode paging, 386 protected mode, task state segments & multitasking, ring level transitions, caching, alll the way up to more Pentium related topics like local APIC, MMX, & SSE1/2/3. He even goes as far to point out several inconsitencies in the official Intel documentation, & provides his own research & analysis on the ambiguities raised by the Intel documentation.

I'd give it a 5/5 for the breadth of information covered, although an update covering EMT64 would be appreciated. Others have said that they don't like the way the book is presented - often it can repeat itself, but if you're looking at things like CPUID for pentium 4, it's a pain to have to flip back to Pentium 1 CPUID for a refresher on some bits. Although this makes the book bigger that it could be, I don't find it that much of a bind :).