Introduction

Why study computer architecture?
"The world is full of case studies outlining software engineering disasters." More than often we can find availabe code that is difficult to read and maintain. On rare occasion, programmer experience an opportunity to work on a well-designed system, so that one can produce the exclamation, "This is truly great code!".

Writing efficient code is related to efficiency, something that may be oversighted due computer capablities. "Machines are getting exponentially more powerful per unit cost, yet users seems to be unaware of this improvement". The thing is that speed and computer power create bad habits because programmers do not pay attention to create efficient code.