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Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction
Principles of Computer System Design is the first textbook to take a principles-based approach to the computer system design. It 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.
The book is recommended for junior and senior undergraduate students in Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Distributed Operating Systems and/or Computer Systems Design courses; and professional computer systems designers.
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.
The book is recommended for junior and senior undergraduate students in Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Distributed Operating Systems and/or Computer Systems Design courses; and professional computer systems designers.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 13, 2017
Read some chapters as part of CS110 at Stanford.
I learned a lot but it is very dry and required me to read and re-read the chapter multiple times.
I learned a lot but it is very dry and required me to read and re-read the chapter multiple times.
October 3, 2023
Use Tanebaum and Bos' Modern Operating Systems or Arpaci-Dusseau's Operating Systems Three Easy Pieces instead.
This textbook is dry, full of pointless high-level fluff, verbose, and overly generic. Teaching operating systems from a generic, theoretical perspective is just a lot harder to learn from than something like Modern Operating Systems that actually includes pseudocode using the stl, pthreads, unix system calls, etc.
Not to mention Linus Torvalds studied Tanebaum's other textbook before creating Linux.
This textbook is dry, full of pointless high-level fluff, verbose, and overly generic. Teaching operating systems from a generic, theoretical perspective is just a lot harder to learn from than something like Modern Operating Systems that actually includes pseudocode using the stl, pthreads, unix system calls, etc.
Not to mention Linus Torvalds studied Tanebaum's other textbook before creating Linux.
August 4, 2017
A good introduction to computer system: a great overview of all about a computer starting from file system and operating system to network. I think is a useful book for a first sight to computer system even though is to much generic in explaining some particular but in general this is not a problem for me.
Word of computer science engineering
Word of computer science engineering
August 8, 2013
Good read for computer system engineers, but too verbose.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews