• The content addresses the core fundamental topics without spending too much time on hardware related issues
• Each topic is covered in the context of the entire machine allowing students to see how implementation affects behavior.
• More software type issues like networking are included as a continuing thread.

Case Studies

• Motivate students with real world examples in each chapter
• Some cases are: “Patriot Missile Defense failure caused by loss of precision”, “What happens when a computer boots up?” and “How a virus infects a machine” 

Feature boxes cover commercial processors

• Students learn about Intel and Motorola processors which dominate the industry

Uses subset of SPARC, grounded in a real-world computer architecture tool for instruction set architecture throughout the text

• A RISC Computer (ARC) is complemented with platform-independent software tools
• ARCTools suite is fully class-tested and supports the examples used in the book