Course At A Glance

The aim of the course is to present how modern computer systems work and are built. We will cover topics on architecture and organization of modern computing systems including CPU design, instruction sets, superscalar processors and multiprocessors. The emphasis is on the major component subsystems of high performance computers: pipelining, instruction level parallelism, thread-level parallelism, memory hierarchies, input/output, and network-oriented interconnections.

The texbook material will generally be followed; however, being published in 2006, it does not contain some of the advancements in computer architecture that took place in the past 2 years. Therefore, in-class material will be supplemented by current research papers and in-class 'infosessions' - 10-minute presentations by students covering topics on modern computer architecture advancements.

Read the text, attempt all exercises, discuss research papers, and most importantly - have fun!

What the heck is a microprocessor good for?
(Robert Lloyd of IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Division, 1968)

Textbook

The required text for the course:

  • John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach, 4th Edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., 2006, ISBN: 0-12-370490-1

A reference text:

  • John P. Shen and Mikko H. Lipasti, Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar Processors, McGrawHill, ISBN: 0-07-057064-7

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
(John von Neumann, 1949)

Course Topics

The following topics will be covered in this course:

  • Fundamentals of Computer Design
  • Instruction Set Principles
  • Instruction-Level Parallelism
  • Thread-Level Parallelism
  • Pipelined Processors
  • Superscalar Processor Design
  • Memory Hierarchy Design
  • Storage Systems & Networks

Why would you want more than one machine language?
(John von Neumann, 1954)

Grading

The following breakdown will be used to calculate the final grade:

  • Homework assignments: 15%
  • In-class Infosessions: 5%
  • Mid-term Exam: 25%
  • Project/Presentation: 25%
  • Final Exam (cumulative): 30%

Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.
(Arthur Summerfield, US Postmaster General, 1959)

Lecture Notes

Lecture note links will be posted here as they become available.

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
(Popular Mechanics, 1949)