MindShare Book Recommendation

NTDEV
1

Hi,

I am planning to buy a book about processors from MindShare and I have the following two options:

  1. The Unabridged Pentium 4: IA32 Processor Genealogy
  2. x86 Instruction Set Architecture

I am a beginner, which one will be more helpful?

Thanks,

–
Regards,

-George

2

Actually, you can get the information from Intel for free. They have
PDF’s of their manuals. Go to the intel site and search for “ia32
processor manual” you will get hits on all of this.

Many people like the Mindshare books but after one bad experience where
a hardware designer trusted Mindshare over the PCI spec and wasted
months of software development time till we found the mistake. I trust
the base references first.

Don Burn (MVP, Windows DKD)
Windows Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr

“xxxxx@windevblog.com” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev:

> Hi,
>
>
> I am planning to buy a book about processors from MindShare and I have the following two options:
>
> 1. The Unabridged Pentium 4: IA32 Processor Genealogy
> 2. x86 Instruction Set Architecture
>
> I am a beginner, which one will be more helpful?
>
> Thanks,
>
> –
> Regards,
>
> -George

3

It is rather old.

Mark Roddy

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 9:59 AM, George Luiz Bittencourt
wrote:
> Unabridged Pentium 4: IA32 Processor Genealogy

4

Or, the Mindshare book is a badly re-written version of the spec that, despite its title, is out of date and semi-incorrect.

This applies to at least ONE Mindshare book that I own. Rather, owned, past tense. It is now in the landfill.

Peter
OSR

5

In general, I’ve found the “Mindshare” series to deteriorate based on
publishing date. Their “ISA Architecture” book is fabulous, partly because
there was no ISA spec and they fought for that information with experience.
Their PCI book is pretty good. Their PCI Express book is marginal. Their
processor books are mostly useless, as they have long sections on what OS
designers need to do, with not much correlation between the text and what an
OS really does.

The latter ones seem to be retellings of the various specs, without
troubling the reader to understand the real specs. The problem is exactly
what the other people have suggested, that you can’t base actual products on
retellings.

If what you need is a quick overview for topics that you want to loosely
understand without actually building a product, they’re useful. If you want
the real details, read the real specs.

  • Jake Oshins

wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…

Or, the Mindshare book is a badly re-written version of the spec that,
despite its title, is out of date and semi-incorrect.

This applies to at least ONE Mindshare book that I own. Rather, owned, past
tense. It is now in the landfill.

Peter
OSR

6

Thanks for all the suggestions!

-George

7

George Luiz Bittencourt wrote:

I am planning to buy a book about processors from MindShare and I have the following two options:

  1. The Unabridged Pentium 4: IA32 Processor Genealogy
  2. x86 Instruction Set Architecture

I am a beginner, which one will be more helpful?

If I may I ask, a beginner in what? What path are you trying to go down?

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.