I’m studying computer science and computer architecture is a course I did in the third semester. This course was different from what I was doing or knew until then. If I could time travel I would return to that moment before the semester started and say to me: “read Inside the machine you idiot”. Really this book would have been really helpful to have a foundation to understand better the topics of that class. I won’t say that the professor was bad, i can only say is that I wasn’t prepared.
Inside the machine by Jon Stokes uses a language easy to understand and dont bothers to dive into topics that are not important for the comprehension of the entire chapter. It uses different analogies that other books like “Computer Organization and Design” by Patterson don’t use. In my opinion the analogies in Inside the machine explain more, for instance the analogy of a laundry in Patterson’s book is good but I prefer the one in Stoke’s book. The analogy uses a factory of cars and how pipelining the work helps produce more cars.
From explaining the ALU to explaining how some populars processors worked, this book really helps the reader understand how computers work. The only thing I didn’t like was that it uses colors that can be confused when reading in white and black (I use a kindle to read) but this is just nit-picking
In summary, give this book a try if you: 1) are going to start a computer architecture course as an undergraduate, 2) want to learn how computers really work. As with most no starch press books it’s easy to understand and interesting to read.