Digital computers have evolved over the years with a continual growth in their performance so as to satisfy the ever-increasing demand from users. An attempt is made in this book to demystify the field of computer architecture. The techniques used over the years to obtain nearly a linear improvement in computer system performance are clearly explained. A reduction in cost of hardware has allowed techniques that could be used only in high-performance machines of 1970's to be integrated into low-cost digital computers
such as desktop and laptop computers. This brought about a revolution in the performance of digital computers. These techniques and a knowledge about their development give an insight into the important field of computer architecture. Moreover, such knowledge would help readers to effectively approach and solve any problem in a related field. There are many excellent books on this subject matter. Then, a question which naturally arises is "what is the reason behind writing another book on the subject." The reasons which merit
publication of this book are as follows:
(i) The books currently in the market on Computer Architecture cover the subject matter comprehensively, which though important, is not appealing to everyone.
(ii) This book on the other hand is not comprehensive in nature. At the same time, it does not leave out any of the important topics that a student needs to learn to master the subject.
(iii) It includes relevant case studies to show how the concepts learned are used in practice.
(iv) The book explains Vector processors, SIMD architectures, SIMD Instruction set extensions and Graphics Processor Units, the alternative architectures used to exploit data-level parallelism prevalent in contemporary user applications.
(v) It includes a number or questions of different varieties, including multiple-choice questions, short answer type questions and problems. These help to further clarify the concepts learned.
(vi) Most importantly, the book is believed to be student-centric.