PCI System Architecture

Being an Electrical Engineer, and one that has already designed a PCI product (PC Card), I purchased this book as a re-fresher based on another EE comments. The book is VERY good at: Describing the many PCI based registers. Providing useful timing diagram information. Providing useful driver information tips, and explaining the "fair" nature of the PCI bus. The book is poor at: Providing useful electronic interface information. Way too wordy, but worse yet overly repetitive. Did not cover PCB layout issues. Overly focused on PC interface - what about embedded system?The PCI bus architecture has grown to huge acceptance within the embedded world, yet this book focuses almost entirely on a PC interface. The book also fails to address the electrical characteristics of the bus. About four pages (total of 700+) are spent on the reflective wave nature of PCI. This is a lost because most EE are only familiar with an incident wave bus signal. If designing a complex embedded system with multiple loads, and PCI to PCI Bridges, you can forget about any help here when it comes to multiple transmission line reflections and PCB layout assistance. How could anyone write a "how to" book about a bus (any bus for that matter) and fail to cover the topic of bus transmission is beyond me (especially a bus that can clock up to 66MHz). WOW unbelievable! Lastly, this must have been a pay by the page deal. There are over 700+ pages (and I read most of them). Believe me, it could have been much shorter. Much of the information is repeated over, and over again (more than 2 or 3 times).

older information, great for learning, for advanced studies

If you're looking for an extensive guide to the hardware workings of PCI, this is THE book. I read it, then bought the PCI spec (because I needed mechanical info). After looking through the spec, I realize that PCI System Architecture covers every aspect of conceptual, and almost all detail, information that is in the spec. As far as specs go, the PCI spec is very readable, but this book turns the PCI spec into a "for dummies" book in the sense that it's so easy to follow. Numerous and overlapping examples make it clear what's going on, and by the time you're done reading, you can do this stuff in your sleep. Only thing absent was mechanical info (though for $50, you really should buy the spec).

This expensive text covers many details of the PCI bus architecture and related protocols. There are details that are glossed over or completely left out.

:)

Geez it's all in here. What more could you want? I needed to write a device driver in Mac OS X for a custom PCI card. It was my first driver and I was clueless about PCI. It's a simple decision: If you're doing PCI, get this book.

Excellent reference book.

all ok