- Paperback: 600 pages
- Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann (8 Dec 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0123749573
- ISBN-13: 978-0123749574
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 18.8 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 882,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction
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Product Description
Review
"This is a unique, ambitious, and important book. It is about computer system design principles, and not the usual mechanics of how things work. These principles are typically embedded in research papers (for those of which are to be found at all), and no book I know of makes so many of them explicit and its focal point." -Joe Pasquale, UC San Diego "The book is a great introduction to system design issues that are only taught at few courses in few universities, even-though they show up in computer systems everywhere. This is a very good and easy read for any one in computer industry. It describes all parts of computer systems and how they interact very well. The extension of the book is online and many chapters are available for free to download. The chapter on Naming is worth the money of the book. I have not seen the discussion of naming in such detail and simple terms anywhere. The authors are very well respected professors at MIT and have experience in operating systems and computer system since its early days. I highly recommend this book to any hardware or software student or professional engineer."--Amazon.com 5 star review THE missing link, January 16, 2010 By clivebaker "clivebaker" "[A] unique of several design patterns that are used as building blocks in computer systems. The primary novelty in Saltzer and Kaashoek's book is the fresh and original presentation of several related topics. The book is logically divided into two parts: Part 1 is included in the hard-copy book; Part 2 is only available online. I highly recommend this well-written and well-structured book to several groups of readers: undergraduate students can use it as a gentle introduction to computer architecture and OSs, and graduate students and more advanced readers will enjoy its philosophical and design-oriented aspects. In fact, the book may eventually become a classic and a must-read for any computer scientist."--Computing Reviews
Product Description
This text identifies, examines, and illustrates fundamental concepts in computer system design that are common across operating systems, networks, database systems, distributed systems, programming languages, software engineering, security, fault tolerance, and architecture. Through carefully analyzed case studies from each of these disciplines, it demonstrates how to apply these concepts to tackle practical system design problems.
To support the focus on design, the text identifies and explains abstractions that have proven successful in practice such as, remote procedure call, client/service organization, file systems, data integrity, consistency, and authenticated messages. Most computer systems are built using a handful of such abstractions. The text describes how these abstractions are implemented, demonstrates how they are used in different systems, and prepares the reader to apply them in future designs.
Features:
* Formulates, examines and illustrates the main principles of computer system design
* Presents a cross-disciplinary approach drawing on examples from networking, operating systems, distributed systems, architecture and other disciplines within CS.
* Illustrates principles with in-depth analysis of case studies of systems such as Unix file system, URL, NFS, DNS,x-86, virtual machines, disk arms, etc.
* Presents examples, case studies, and problems in pseudo code.
To support the focus on design, the text identifies and explains abstractions that have proven successful in practice such as, remote procedure call, client/service organization, file systems, data integrity, consistency, and authenticated messages. Most computer systems are built using a handful of such abstractions. The text describes how these abstractions are implemented, demonstrates how they are used in different systems, and prepares the reader to apply them in future designs.
Features:
* Formulates, examines and illustrates the main principles of computer system design
* Presents a cross-disciplinary approach drawing on examples from networking, operating systems, distributed systems, architecture and other disciplines within CS.
* Illustrates principles with in-depth analysis of case studies of systems such as Unix file system, URL, NFS, DNS,x-86, virtual machines, disk arms, etc.
* Presents examples, case studies, and problems in pseudo code.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The first chapter is actually not that bad. But that is only because it contains a large amount of good quotes.
The book is much too long. Page after page after page is used discussing trivialities, or unrealistic scenarios in which certain errors or details are ignored. The book always wavers in generalities never giving any useful details. Ironically the discussions are also very narrow minded; most of them only applies to imperative object oriented languages.
Especially the chapter on concurrency is bad. The approach is supposed to be a generic one, but it smells so much of pthreads (or the Java equivalent) that it is hard to believe the author has had experience with other approaches.
In conclusion: A book on software system design by someone that only knows Java is unserious (I don't know if this is indeed the case, but it sure feels that way).
Anyone interested in system design should go and design systems. And as many different systems as possible. Java, C and pthreads is just not enough. What about Haskell, Erlang and STM?
The book is much too long. Page after page after page is used discussing trivialities, or unrealistic scenarios in which certain errors or details are ignored. The book always wavers in generalities never giving any useful details. Ironically the discussions are also very narrow minded; most of them only applies to imperative object oriented languages.
Especially the chapter on concurrency is bad. The approach is supposed to be a generic one, but it smells so much of pthreads (or the Java equivalent) that it is hard to believe the author has had experience with other approaches.
In conclusion: A book on software system design by someone that only knows Java is unserious (I don't know if this is indeed the case, but it sure feels that way).
Anyone interested in system design should go and design systems. And as many different systems as possible. Java, C and pthreads is just not enough. What about Haskell, Erlang and STM?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
THE missing link
17 Jan 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is a great introduction to system design issues that are only taught at few courses in few universities. even-though they show up in computer systems everywhere. This is a very good and easy read for any one in computer industry . it describes all parts of computer systems and how they interact very well. The extension of the book is online and many chapters are available for free to download.
The chapter on Naming is worth the money of the book. I have not seen the discussion of naming in such detail and simple terms anywhere,
The authors are very well respected professors at MIT and have experience in operating systems and computer system since its early days.
I highly recommend this book to any hardware or software student or professional engnineer.
The chapter on Naming is worth the money of the book. I have not seen the discussion of naming in such detail and simple terms anywhere,
The authors are very well respected professors at MIT and have experience in operating systems and computer system since its early days.
I highly recommend this book to any hardware or software student or professional engnineer.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Mediocre
25 Sep 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is not organized well. While the goal is to teach abstractions, too few and well thought out examples bring the abstractions back down to real world situations, thus the intrinsic value of an abstraction is not conveyed.
There are also significant typos in the exercises that make some unsolvable. The order of events are reversed in some of these exercises, wherein the whole point of the exercise is lost and there is no answer.
There are also significant typos in the exercises that make some unsolvable. The order of events are reversed in some of these exercises, wherein the whole point of the exercise is lost and there is no answer.
Poorly Conveyed
26 Feb 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I understand that these authors may be "living legends" in their fields - the text absolutely conveys a superior knowledge of the subject. However, the information is poorly organized and, overall, poorly conveyed.
The reading is extremely dense and difficult to follow. While information density is never a bad thing - dissecting vast knowledge that is organized and described poorly is a terrible exercise in frustration. In the creation of this text, the authors set themselves up for a magnificent challenge: to convey their superlative knowledge of computer architecture in a way others may learn from effectively. I believe the authors ultimately failed this challenge.
As a student, attempting to extract information from this book is extremely frustrating. Nearly every, single sentence reads somewhat like a vocabulary exercise - only the vocabulary and language is entirely relative to other densely worded and entirely relative bits of information within the text. If the authors intended this book to be stored within a piece of RAM and read by a machine I'm sure the text would be entirely useful. Unfortunately, this book is intended for human beings to construct a framework of knowledge. We do so by connecting new information with frameworks already established in reality. This text fails miserably to serve that purpose.
I do not wish to disrespect the authors' authority on the subject, nor do I wish to undermine their writing ability. Nevertheless, after quickly realizing complete frustration with this text I feel compelled, as well as obligated, to share my experience with it.
The reading is extremely dense and difficult to follow. While information density is never a bad thing - dissecting vast knowledge that is organized and described poorly is a terrible exercise in frustration. In the creation of this text, the authors set themselves up for a magnificent challenge: to convey their superlative knowledge of computer architecture in a way others may learn from effectively. I believe the authors ultimately failed this challenge.
As a student, attempting to extract information from this book is extremely frustrating. Nearly every, single sentence reads somewhat like a vocabulary exercise - only the vocabulary and language is entirely relative to other densely worded and entirely relative bits of information within the text. If the authors intended this book to be stored within a piece of RAM and read by a machine I'm sure the text would be entirely useful. Unfortunately, this book is intended for human beings to construct a framework of knowledge. We do so by connecting new information with frameworks already established in reality. This text fails miserably to serve that purpose.
I do not wish to disrespect the authors' authority on the subject, nor do I wish to undermine their writing ability. Nevertheless, after quickly realizing complete frustration with this text I feel compelled, as well as obligated, to share my experience with it.
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