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AGP System Architecture, by Dave Dzatko, is a meaty and diligent book snapshotting a moving target -- the emerging Accelerated Graphics Port standard. This book is a good bet for your first highly technical introduction to AGP if you are poised to enter AGP development shortly.
AGP System Architecture covers the Intel Revision 2.0 specification of the Accelerated Graphics Port, an architecture designed to contain costs of 3D graphical rendering by reducing the amount of local memory required for larger and more detailed textures emerging in today's applications.
AGP System Architecture is one part of the PC Architecture Series (MindShare, http://www.awl.com/cseng/series/mindshare), a series which has produced a number of notable volumes. These books are more readable than standards documents or chipset documentation and are also richer in insight and theoretical background than those materials tend to be. Currently, the series comprises:
I first became aquainted with the series about a year ago, when urgent development considerations prompted me to purchase PCI System Architecture, Third Edition, a decision I don't regret. Perhaps I am hopelessly nuts-and-bolts nerdy, but I found it thrilling bedtime reading. That particular volume is, in fact, probably a prerequisite to understanding AGP, which is sort of a cooperative peer of the PCI bus. In turn, an understanding of ISA architecture enables one to grasp the PCI volume.
The PC System Architecture series is laid out with the interdependence of the concepts in mind, in building-block style, and the reader is directed in the introduction of the relationship between the building blocks and given a map of the series and the interrelations between volumes. However, if you are already conversant in the underlying concepts (for example, PCI in the case of the AGP volume), the individual book is entirely readable on its own; there is no textual dependency between the books in the series.
It is refreshing that nowadays such excellent guides to the jungle of PC architecture are available for hardware and software engineers. This is one of those rare instances where even the cover blurbs back and front are dry and accurate. AGP System Architecture and others of this series are impressive as time-valued rush-to-press technical publishing of the first caliber. The authors, editors, and publisher have not skimped on the printing and production value, nor on the wealth of diagrams, nor on profound discussion of issues, nor even, apparently, on technical review procedures prior to publication.
The only thing better than reading AGP System Architecture for understanding AGP is to have all the source documents in front of you along with the hardware and development tools and to get busy writing the system software yourself.
-- Jack Woehr
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Explanation of ERCB rating scale: No stars = unacceptable, 1 Star = marginal, 2 Stars = average, 3 Stars = above average, 4 Stars = exceptional.