system architecture
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PCI System Architecture
The following report compares books using the SERCount Rating (base on the result count from the search engine).
Rating: 3.61/5 from 18 reviews Simple and very didacticNot for Software DevelopersBasically, this book is very similar to the PCI SIG specification in many respects (without the hefty PCI SIG membership fee). I was surprised to find that Hot-Plug PCI is given some treatment, but as with most of the material it was generalized and skewed towards the hardware design audience. This book does do a good job of laying out the registers and explaining them. After I finished reading this book, I was able to do what I need to do, but didn't have a great idea of how the whole system worked. There are plenty of timing diagrams and lots of good information, but most of it useless for a software developer. For example, the entire chapter of Hot-Plug PCI was well written, but it described what needed to be done to the various control lines-- something that would be implemented by the Hotplug PCI chipset controller. As a result, it is nice to know, but ultimately, useless. Simply stated, if you are looking for a book to help write a device driver for a PCI-based device, this isn't it. On the other hand, if you are software developer looking for a primer on PCI, I would still look elsewhere. Not too different from the PCI Spec from PCI-SIGHi, Bought this book under the assumption that the coverage would be better than the PCI Specification from PCI-SIG, but the book is pretty much an exact copy of the specification document. If you can get your hands on the original PCI spec., you will be better off. The only saving grace for this book was that it covered all the stuff from the spec., so if you don't have access to the spec., the book does an ok job covering the whole PCI area. | ||||||||||||||||||||
The book refers to both 33 and 66 MHz PCI.
The book language is clear, the diagrams are good and the division by subjects is well done.
At the beginning of every chapter, you can see a summary of the contents of the chapter, as well as a short sentence about the previous and next chapters.
NOTE: I am a hardware designer, and I think that hardware issues were well covered in the book. As I have seen from previous reviews, software designers think that there is not enough information in the book for them. Also, as already noted by other reviewers, mechanical aspects are not covered by the book.