Good textbooks on "Computing Architecture"?

Question

I am going to teach my first undergraduate class on "Computing Architecture." I guess that this is not quite a proper term because other related terms, like Computer Architecture, usually refer to low-level structure of computer system. Architecture in "computing architecture" is used as in software or system architecture.

Actually this course is not for CS students but for undergraduate students from the department of information technology which is inclined toward business world. So it is designed to be an overview of computing systems from higher-level perspective such as client-server, parallel computing, distributed computing, and, maybe, cloud computing.

Though the class is going to be taught in another language, English textbooks are very welcome. Does anyone have any idea about such textbooks or other (probably free) sources which cover the topics?

Answer 1

Get Theo Schlossnagle's Scalable Internet Architectures. It covers web architectures really, really well.

Answer 2

Software Architecture in Practice by Len Bass, Paul Clements and Rick Kazman. Very useful book.

Answer 3

There's some great lectures on Youtube on Computer Architecture from Stanford and IIT, among others, that I found very enlightening. As an instructor, it's probably worth your time to at least scan through them to see how those professors chose to explain the various topics. When I took an architecture class, my professor (who was very knowledgeable and experienced) didn't do a great job of explaining concepts like data forwarding and caches, and it wasn't until I watched some of these videos that I really understood everything thoroughly.

In today's academic world, what with the Internet and freely available text-based knowledge, I feel that a professor's teaching style and ability to convey concepts has more of an impact on learning than the choice of book. It's becoming all about what value you as an instructor can add to the material. This also explains why a lot of students these days never bother showing up at lectures.

I would tell you what book I used, but it wasn't great, so it's probably not useful to you.

Answer 4

I read Computer Organization and Design when I was a CS undergrad.

Answer 5

I have to go with Computer arquitecture, a quantitative approach and Computer Organization and Design