Further Reading
You can learn more about Amdahl's Law by reading his original paper (Amdahl, 1967). Hennessey and Patterson (1996) provide additional coverage of Amdahl's Law.
Rosch (1997) contains a wealth of detail relevant to many of the topics described in this chapter, although it focuses primarily on small computer systems. It is well organized and its style is clear and readable.
Rosch (1997) also presents a good overview of CD storage technology. More complete coverage, including CD-ROM's physical, mathematical, and electrical engineering underpinnings, can be found in Stan (1998) and Williams (1994).
Patterson, Gibson, and Katz (1988) provide the foundation paper for the RAID architecture.
The IBM Corporation hosts what is by far the best Web site for detailed technical information. IBM stands alone in making prodigious quantities of excellent documentation available for all seekers. Their home page can be found at www.ibm.com. IBM also has a number of sites devoted to specific areas of interest, including storage systems (www.storage.ibm.com), in addition to their server product lines (www.ibm.com/eservers). IBM's research and development pages contain the latest information relevant to emerging technologies (www.research.ibm.com). High-quality scholarly research journals can be found through this site at www.research.ibm.com/journal.
There is no shortage of excellent writing on the topic of data compression. Lelewer and Hirschberg (1987) present an oft-cited theoretical overview. A more thorough treatment-with source code-can be found in Nelson and Gailly (1996). With their clear and casual writing style, Nelson and Gailly make learning the arcane art of data compression a truly pleasurable experience. A wealth of information relevant to data compression can be found on the Web as well. Any good search engine will point you to hundreds of links when you search on any of the key data compression terms introduced in this chapter.
Wavelet theory is gaining importance in the area of data compression as well as data communications. If you want to delve into this heady area, you may wish to start with Vetterli and Kovac˘evi´c (1995). This book also contains an exhaustive account of image compression, including JPEG and, of course, the wavelet theory behind JPEG2000.
The special "Focus On" section at the end of this chapter discusses a number of I/O architectures including Fibre Channel, SANs, and HIPPI. At this writing, few books describing Fibre Channel or SANS can be found. Clark (1999) and Thornburgh (1999) both provide good discussions of this topic. An industry consensus group called the National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS-formerly the Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology) maintains a comprehensive Web page at www.t11.org, where you can find the latest SCSI-3 draft standards. HIPPI specifications can be found on the HIPPI Web site at www.hippi.org.
Rosch (1997) contains a wealth of information about SCSI and other bus architectures and how they are implemented in small computer systems.
