Brey gives a comprehensive description of the entire family of Intel microprocessors, from the original 8086 to the current Pentium Pro. The book is impressive not only in its scope, but in its coverage and detail. It is intended for engineering students, and is well suited to that audience. It includes all the details, from chip-level specifications, timings, and pinouts to control instructions and interface programming.

After a brief but useful introduction, the coverage begins with standard architecture topics, register and memory organization, number and instruction formats, register-level programming, and assembly language. The middle third of the book covers the general Intel hardware model, including interfacing and programming. I like the combination of chip specifications, assembly code for the interface, and example circuits. The style and presentation are clear and easy to follow.

The last part of the book compares the various Intel products, from the 8086 and 8088 to the Pentium Pro. While short, this section is important and useful to students, as it gives some sense of the evolution of processor features. This section is oriented more to features than to concepts. For example, it mentions the new registers and instructions introduced with each model, but not the architectural concept represented or the effects on usage or performance.

One issue with using this book for a course is that it spends much time on the historical processors, and thus less time on contemporary models. However, its goal is to cover both the specific processors and the architectures that they represent; thus, these simpler chips are adequate. It also provides in-depth coverage of Intel processors to the exclusion of other models, thus missing important topics related to other approaches, notably RISC systems. However, with the dominance of Intel, perhaps this is an appropriate and practical approach for a first course for undergraduates.

The author does not explain or explore architecture issues, such as pipelining and parallelism, or the associated control issues and tradeoffs. For coverage at this architectural level, this book may not be the best choice. Exercises are provided for each chapter, although they are generally very specific and detail-oriented. A laboratory manual with projects is available, and I think labs would be an important part of using this book.

This book is a good choice for an engineering curriculum. It would also be beneficial as a reference or independent study book for anyone with a need to understand or explore the creation of circuits or interfaces to Intel processors.