As the authors explain in their preface to the Second Edition, computer architecture itself has undergone significant change since 1990. Concentrating on currently predominant and emerging commercial systems, Hennessy and Patterson have prepared entirely new chapters covering additional advanced topics. A new chapter emphasizes superscalar and multiple issues. * Networks : a chapter examines in depth the design issues for small and large shared-memory multiprocessors. This book includes coverage of I/O performance measures; memory : caches and memory-hierarchy design addresses contemporary design issues. It is completely revised on current architectures such as MIPS R4000, Intel 80x86 and Pentium, PowerPC, and HP PA-RISC.