Course Schedule

"P&H" indicates readings from Patterson and Hennessy. Additional

readings will be given occasionally. Links will be added here with additional information about lectures, labs, and other assignments. All assignment dates are subject to change, and are provided only as a general guideline until the actual assignment is handed out in class.

Date Topic and/or Event Readings
Sept. 7 Introduction and Overview; Review of Bits and Numbers P&H Ch. 1, Topic Notes: Intro, Topic Notes: Bits and Numbers
Sept. 10 Computer Arithmetic and Bitwise Operations; Lab 1: Bit Manipulations in C -
Sept. 12 Floating Point Representations; Instruction Set Architecture; MIPS Assembly: Simple Arithmetic, Registers Topic Notes: MIPS ISA, P&H Ch. 2.1-2.3
Sept. 17 MIPS ISA: Instruction Formats, Logical Operations, Branches; Lab 2: Decoding MIPS Instructions P&H Ch. 2-4-2.6
Sept. 19 More MIPS ISA P&H Ch. 2.9, 2.16-2.17
Sept. 24 MIPS ISA Wrapup; Brief look at IA-32; Introduction to Digital Logic; Lab 3: Introduction to Digital Logic Topic Notes: Digital Logic, P&H App. B.1
Sept. 26 Combinational Circuits; Simplifications P&H App. B.2-B.3
Oct. 1 Meet in lab to complete Lab 3 circuits -
Oct. 3 Adders, Multiplexers, Demultiplexers, Encoders, Decoders; Exam 1 Out (due Oct. 5) P&H App. B.5
Oct. 8 No Class - Mid-Semester Break -
Oct. 10 Sequential Circuits; Lab 4: Sequential Circuits Topic Notes: Sequential Circuits, P&H App. B.8
Oct. 15 More Sequential Circuits: Latches, Flip Flops, Counters -
Oct. 17 Synchronous Counters; Building Memory; Lab 5: Memory with TTL Topic Notes: Building Memory, P&H App. B.9
Oct. 22 Building Larger Memory, working on Lab 5
Oct. 24 SIMM Layout; Memory Parity and Error Correction -
Oct. 29 Review
Oct. 31 More Review
Nov. 5 Building a Data Path; Exam 2 Out (due Nov. 9) Topic Notes: Data Paths and Microprogramming, P&H Ch. 5.1-5.4
Nov. 7 A Sample MIPS Implementation P&H Ch. 5.5
Nov. 12 Multicycle control: Finite State and Microprogramming; Lab 6: MIPS Multi-Cycle Control P&H Ch. 5.7
Nov. 14 Class Cancelled - Supercomputing '07
Nov. 19 Microprogramming -
Nov. 21 No Class - Happy Thanksgiving! -
Nov. 26 Exceptions Topic Notes: Exceptions, P&H Ch. 5.6
Nov. 28 RISC vs. CISC, Pipelining Introduction Topic Notes: Pipelines, P&H Ch. 6.1
Dec. 3 Pipeline Details P&H 6.2-6.9
Dec. 5 Memory Hierarchies and Caches Topic Notes: Memory Hierarchies, P&H 7.1-7.3
Dec. 10 Virtual Memory; Course Evaluations P&H 7.4-7.6
Dec. 12 Modern Architectures: Parallelism Topic Notes: Modern Architectures: Parallelism
Dec. 15-19 Take-Home Final Exam -