Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Operating Systems Concepts is a great undergraduate-level resource for its subject, focusing, as its name advertises, on the concepts behind building an operating system. Outside of the exercises, the text spends relatively little time on code examples or gritty details, relegating that to suggested reading or simply saying “Go look at an open-source operating system!”.

This emphasis on concepts makes a great deal of sense given the variance in how to accomplish goals and the sheer amount of groundwork which the book needs to cover. The book is already over 900 pages!

This book is a great read for any long-time user of operating systems who wants to understand the amazing piece of software that orchestrates their entire computing experience, as well as being great review for practitioners who want a refresher. Five stars.

This will be short not because the book isn’t good, but because I’ve got too many irons in the fire.

Computer Organization and Design by Patterson | Hennessy is the gentle introduction to hardware. The math is simple and easy to understand, the book layout is excellent, and the content is outstanding. If you want an understanding of how computers work on the most fundamental level, this is your book.

In addition to the main book, be sure to read Online Appendix C: Graphics Cards. Most software engineers already have an intuitive idea of programming on a traditional CPU, but this approachable yet thorough appendix teaches graphics card architecture and the CUDA multithreading model. I can’t recommend it enough.

A couple months since my last book review, and I’ve finally slain this beast.

Continue reading What I’m Reading: Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation by Steven Muchnick →

Hey, anyone like advanced math and assembly language? If you complain that C is too high-level of a language, I’ve found the book for you.

Continue reading What I’m Reading: Hacker’s Delight 2/e by Henry S. Warren, Jr. →