In Praise of Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach
Sixth Edition
“Although important concepts of architecture are timeless, this edition has been
thoroughly updated with the latest technology developments, costs, examples,
and references. Keeping pace with recent developments in open-sourced architec-
ture, the instruction set architecture used in the book has been updated to use the
RISC-V ISA.”
—from the foreword by Norman P. Jouppi, Google
“Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach is a classic that, like fine wine,
just keeps getting better. I bought my first copy as I finished up my undergraduate
degree and it remains one of my most frequently referenced texts today.”
—James Hamilton, Amazon Web Service
“Hennessy and Patterson wrote the first edition of this book when graduate stu-
dents built computers with 50,000 transistors. Today, warehouse-size computers
contain that many servers, each consisting of dozens of independent processors
and billions of transistors. The evolution of compu ter architecture has been rapid
and relentless, but Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach has kept pace,
with each edition accurately explaining and analyzing the important emerging
ideas that make this field so exciting.”
—James Larus, Microsoft Research
“Another timely and relevant update to a classic, once again also serving as a win-
dow into the relentless and exciting evolution of computer architecture! The new
discussions in this edition on the slowing of Moore's law and implications for
future systems are must-reads for both computer architects and practitioners
working on broader systems.”
—Parthasarathy (Partha) Ranganathan, Google
“I love the ‘Quantitative Approach’ books because they are written by engineers,
for engineers. John Hennessy and Dave Patterson show the limits imposed by
mathematics and the possibilities enabled by materials science. Then they teach
through real-world examples how architect s analyze, measure, and compromise
to build working systems. This sixth edition comes at a critical time: Moore’s
Law is fading just as deep learning demands unprecedented compute cycles.
The new chapter on domain-specific architectures documents a number of prom-
ising approaches and prophesies a rebirth in computer architecture. Like the
scholars of the European Renaissance, computer architects must understand our
own history, and then combine the lessons of that history with new techniques
to remake the world.”
—Cliff Young, Google
