This book is intended for use in a first-level course on computer organization and embedded systems in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science curricula. The book is self-contained, assuming only that the reader has a basic knowledge of computer programming in a high-level language. Many students who study computer organization will have had an introductory course on digital logic circuits. Therefore, this subject is not covered in the main body of the book. However, we have provided an extensive appendix on logic circuits for those students who need it.

The book reflects our experience in teaching three distinct groups of students: elec-trical and computer engineering undergraduates, computer science undergraduates, and engineering science undergraduates. We have always approached the teaching of courses on computer organization from a practical point of view. Thus, a key consideration in shap-ing the contents of the book has been to carefully explain the main principles, supported by examples drawn from commercially available processors. Our main commercial examples are based on: Altera's Nios II, Freescale's ColdFire, ARM, and Intel's IA-32 architectures.

It is important to recognize that digital system design is not a straightforward process of applying optimal design algorithms. Many design decisions are based largely on heuristic judgment and experience. They involve cost/performance and hardware/software tradeoffs over a range of alternatives. It is our goal to convey these notions to the reader.

The book is aimed at a one-semester course in engineering or computer science pro-grams. It is suitable for both hardware- and software-oriented students. Even though the emphasis is on hardware, we have addressed a number of relevant software issues.

McGraw-Hill maintains a Website with support material for the book at http://www.

mhhe.com/hamacher.

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