Time and Location: Tuesday/Thursday 11:00AM-12:20PM, Morton Hall, 201
Instructor: Adwait Jog (Personal Website)
Office hours: Tues/Thu 1:30 PM-3:00 PM or by appointment, McGl 111
Email: adwait@cs.wm.edu
Teaching Assistant: Gurunath Kadam (Personal Website)
Office hours: Friday 10 AM - noon or by appointment, McGl 139
Deadlines: Sept 8 (add/drop deadline) and Oct 27 (withdraw deadline). See the UG calender for more details.
Exam Dates: Oct 19 (Midterm Exam, in-class) and Dec 18 (Final Exam, 2:00 to 5:00 PM in the regular class-room, see Fall 2017 Final Exam Schedule for more details.)
Prerequisite(s): CSCI 304 and either CSCI 301 or CSCI 303
This course will introduce principles of computer design. The students will apply their knowledge of digital logic design to understand the high-level interactions between different computer system hardware components. Specifically, this course will cover various computer architecture aspects related to MIPS ISA, single-cycle data-path design, multiple-cycle design, pipelining, memory hierarchy, and multiprocessor architecture.
Required Textbook: Computer Organization and Design, Patterson & Hennessey (P&H), 5th Edition, see this website for more details.
Resources: Some homeworks will also have simulation-based component. Access to a computer with remote access to a lab machine is necessary. See Simulators section for more details.
Materials: Lecture slides, homeworks, and other course materials will be posted on Blackboard. Updates will be posted on this website as well as course announcements/reminders will be delivered via piazza. Please keep checking all forums regularly for the latest information.
Help: It is important to start working on homeworks early, especially the homeworks that have simulation component. If you need help, show up in the office hours or ask questions in or after the class. You are also highly encouraged to use piazza to ask general clarification or conceptual questions regarding homeworks, quizzes, exams etc.
Homework Assignments (40%, around 8)
In-class/Blackboard Quizzes and Class participation (10%)
In-class Midterm Exam (25%)
Final Exam (25%)
Optional Undergraduate Research Project: Bonus 10% will be awarded if and only if a successful project is completed by the end of the semester (a final report will be due in the finals week). Talk to the instructor if you are interested.
Final letter grades will be given based on the standard scale used in WM. Grades may be curved at the instructor's discretion.
You are expected to attend all lectures. You are responsible for all materials covered in lectures.
You can use laptops only to take notes, however, other electronic devices are not allowed to be used in the class.
All exams are closed textbook/slides. No electronic devices are allowed during exams. One A4-sized cheat sheet is allowed. Yes, you can see both sides of the page.
No collaboration whatsoever is allowed on exams and quizzes. However, you may you use your notes or textbook for quizzes.
You can collaborate on the homework problems with one more student currently enrolled in the class. However, you must write up each problem solution (or MIPS code) by yourself without assistance. You must also identify your collaborator. If you did not work with anyone, you should write ”Collaborator: none.” It is a violation of this policy to submit a problem solution that you cannot orally explain to the instructor or TA.
Homework Assignments and Reports should be submitted electronically (no hard copies) on Blackboard by 23:00 hrs on the due date in the PDF format. You may use MS-word or Latex to typeset your answers, however, final submission has to be in the PDF format. Submission in any other format (including hand-written and then scanned PDFs) will not be graded and will receive zero.
Some homeworks will have simulation-based component. Some homeworks may carry more points than others.
Submission deadlines are hard. However, we do have a late/miss policy:
Late HWs are accepted with 20% penalty for each day they are late by.
If you miss an exam or quiz, you will get zero on that. The lowest score on the quizzes will be dropped.
Exceptions will be handled case by case and will only be considered under a university-approved condition with written proof.
If you have any grading-related questions, please contact the TA first. If issues are not resolved, then you can escalate the matter to the instructor. The instructor will make the final decision.
MARS: A MIPS Simulator. Download and Install V4.5, Aug. 2014 and JAVA SDK. As MARS is a Java program, it should run on any OS. Browse through the software and documentation to familiarize yourself with the software. Here is a good tutorial with lots of screenshots. Read the tutorial first before starting MARS. More documentation can be found here.
SimpleScalar. It is an architecture-level simulator. Refer to these presentation slides and this user guide. Browse through the simulator-software and documentation to familiarize yourself with the environment.
| Week | Date | Agenda | Readings | HW | Quiz | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Aug 31 | Administrativia and Introductions | Quiz 1 Out | First Day of class. | ||
| Week 2 | Sep 5 | Introduction, Abstractions, and Technology | Chapter 1 | Download/Install MARS and run sample codes to prepare for upcoming homeworks. | ||
| Sep 7 | Introduction, Abstractions, and Technology | HW 1 Out | Quiz 1 Due | Sep 8 is the add/drop deadline. | ||
| Week 3 | Sep 12 | MIPS ISA | Appendix A | |||
| Sep 14 | MIPS ISA | HW 1 Due/HW2 Out | Quiz 2 Out | |||
| Week 4 | Sep 19 | MIPS ISA | Chapter 2 | |||
| Sep 21 | MIPS ISA | Quiz 2 Due | ||||
| Week 5 | Sep 26 | MIPS Datapath Components | Appendix B.1 -- B.3 and B.7--B.9 | HW 2 Due / HW3 Out | Quiz 3 Out | |
| Sep 28 | Single Cycle Datapath Design | Chapter 4.1 -- 4.3 | ||||
| Week 6 | Oct 3 | Intro to Pipelining | ||||
| Oct 5 | Pipelining and Hazards | Chapter 4.4 -- 4.7 | HW3 Due / HW4 Out | Quiz 3 Due / Quiz 4 Out | ||
| Week 7 | Oct 10 | Pipelining and Hazards | Practice exam and solutions are out. | |||
| Oct 12 | Mid-term Review | HW 4 Due | Quiz 4 Due | |||
| Week 8 | Oct 17 | No class (Fall Break) | ||||
| Oct 19 | In-class Mid-term Examination. | Mid-term exam will include all the material covered until the Fall break. Exam duration is 75 minutes. One A4-sized cheat sheet is allowed. Yes, you can use both sides of the page. | ||||
| Week 9 | Oct 24 | No Class | Instructor on Travel | |||
| Oct 26 | Pipelining and Related Issues | Chapter 4.8 | HW#5 is out | In-class Analysis of Mid-term. Oct 27 is the withdraw deadline. | ||
| Week 10 | Oct 31 | Memory Hierarchy (Caches) | Chapter 5.1 -- 5.4 | |||
| Nov 2 | Memory Hierarchy (Caches) | HW#5 is due | ||||
| Week 11 | Nov 7 | Memory Hierarchy (Caches) | HW#6 is out | Quiz 5 is out | ||
| Nov 9 | Memory Hierarchy (DRAM) | |||||
| Week 12 | Nov 14 | Virtual Memory and TLBs | Chapter 5.6 -- 5.8 | Quiz 5 is due / Quiz 6 is out | ||
| Nov 16 | Virtual Memory and TLBs | HW#6 is due / HW#7 is out | ||||
| Week 13 | Nov 21 | Review Session | Quiz 6 is due | Quiz review by Gurunath | ||
| Nov 23 | No class (Thanksgiving Break) | |||||
| Week 14 | Nov 28 | Disks and I/O | Chapter 5.11 | Quiz 7 is out | ||
| Nov 30 | Multi-processors | Chapter 6.1 -- 6.5 | HW#7 is due / HW#8 is out | |||
| Week 15 | Dec 5 | Multi-processors | Appendix C-2 | |||
| Dec 7 | Final-exam review and wrap-up | HW#8 is due on Dec 8th. | Quiz 7 is due. | Course evaluations are due on Dec 8 | ||
| Finals | Dec 18 | Comprehensive Final Exam, 2:00 to 5:00 PM, Morton 201 | To be held in the Regular Classroom. (Exam Schedule). Final exam will include all material covered during the semester. |
The university and department policies against academic dishonesty will be strictly enforced.
Students are required to follow the Honor System of the College of William and Mary.
It is the policy of The College of William and Mary to accommodate students with disabilities and qualifying diagnosed conditions in accordance with federal and state laws. Any student who feels s/he may need an accommodation based on the impact of a learning, psychiatric, physical, or chronic health diagnosis should contact Student Accessibility Services staff at 757-221-2509 or at sas@wm.edu to determine if accommodations are warranted and to obtain an official letter of accommodation. For more information, please click here.
The lecture slides of this course are developed based on the original lecture slides from Mary. J. Irwin (Penn State), which were adapted from Computer Organization and Design, 5th Edition, Patterson & Hennessy (P&H), Morgan Kaufmann. The course staff also acknowledges the contributions of Mary. J. Irwin, Chita Das, Yuan Xie, N. Vijaykrishnan, and other instructors and TAs at Penn State, towards developing the course material over a period of time. Some of the collaboration rules are inspired by CSE 465 course at Penn State.