Instructor
Office Hours
Tues. 9:30am - 11:00am
Wed.: 9:00am - 11:00am
Thurs. 3:30pm - 5:00pm
or by appointment
Course Information
This course will cover the design and architecture of modern computer architecture. The focus will be on the architecture of processors, memory hierarchy, instruction pipelining and the hardware-software interface (e.g., the operating system).
A large component of this course will be the lab assignments. These will involve assembly language programming on a processor simulator. As such, knowledge of assembly language is a strong prerequisite.
Textbooks
Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware Software Interface, David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Fourth edition
Operating System Concepts, Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, and Greg Gagne, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Publishers, Eighth edition
Grade Distribution
| Homework Assignments | 34% |
| Quizzes | 5% |
| Midterm Exam 1 | 18% |
| Midterm Exam 2 | 18% |
| Final Exam | 25% |
Grade Assignment
| A- to A | >=90% |
| B- to B+ | >=80% to <90% |
| C- to C+ | >=70% to <80% |
| D- to D+ | >=60% to <70% |
| F | <60% |
I reserve the right to make minor modifications in the grading breakups. Any such changes will be announced in the class and posted on this web page.