CPSC 418: Information
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Course Outline |
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Newsgroup |
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]
- Tuesdays & Thursdays 8:30-10:00 AM
- Room: CICSR 208
There is no required textbook for this course. A series of
articles pulled from industry and academic journals will serve as a
focus for discussion. These articles will be made available at the
start of the term.
For students who would like to have an alternative source covering
the same material, I will provide reading lists from the following
textbooks. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you have access to at least one
of the textbooks -- they all cover the basic material reasonably
well. However, they are expensive and do not provide enough advanced
material for me to justify requiring them.
- D. A. Patterson & J. L. Hennessey,
Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software
Interface
(The text used in CPSC 318)
- J. L. Hennessey & D. A. Patterson,
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach
(A more advanced text than P&H, but too much overlap to buy both)
- J. M. Feldman & C. T. Retter,
Computer Architecture: A Designer's Text Based on a Generic
RISC
(Last year's CPSC 418 text; same lack of advanced material as
P&H)
If you have one of these books, keep it. If you don't have any,
don't bother buying one unless you feel you really need something in
addition to the articles and lectures.
Instead of a required textbook, 10 to 15 articles drawn from
academic and industry journals will be handed out in class. A reading list is available at the web site.
Students are expected to read an article before the class in
which the article will be discussed -- the articles are not long and
class discussion will assume familiarity with the results.
| Homework | 30% | (Approximately six assignments)
|
| Class participation | 10%
|
| Midterm | 20% | (Probably on
Thurs, Feb 27)
|
| Final | 40%
|
The following topics will definitely be covered. At least the
first 50% of the course will be devoted to the first four topics
below.
- Instruction Set Architecture: A contract that defines how
software will interact with hardware over many different implementations.
- Modern Superscalar Architectures: How to issue multiple
instructions per cycle without having to stall.
- Finding Instruction Level Parallelism: How to decide which
instructions can be executed.
- Memory Hierarchies: How to get data into and out of the processor.
- Hardware / Software Interaction: How architecture influences
OS and compilers.
- Benchmarking & Evaluation: How to decide which computer is
best.
- Economics: How costs and design time influence processors
Approximately 25% of the course will be devoted to optional topics.
In addition to expansion on topics listed above, the following topics
may be included. A decision on how to allocate the optional portion
of the course will depend on resources and popular demand.
- I/O: Disks, graphics, networks, and the busses that connect
them to the CPU.
- Specialized processors: multiprocessors, parallel, vector,
microcontrollers and "hidden" processors, graphics subsystems, etc.
- A Case Study of one particular architecture.
- The history of computer architecture.
- Formal Verification: proving that hardware designs are
correct.
- Implementation Details: an introduction to transistors, VLSI,
and other low level stuff.
Any student who earns 30 or more class participation
points (about 2.5 per week) will receive the full
10%. Marks will be linearly scaled from 10% for 30 points to
0% for 0 points.
| Points | Action
|
| 5 | hand in the survey by Thursday, 9 Jan 97
|
| 3 | be first to alert me to an error in an assignment
or solution
|
| 2 | bring a web page or article that can be used in
the course to my attention.
|
| 2 | ask or answer a question, in class or in the newsgroup
|
| 1 | ask a question in private (e.g. in my office or via email)
|
- Most homework assignments will be written. If there is any
programming, it will be in C/C++ or a MIPS-like assembler
(e.g. SAM from CPSC 318).
- Save a tree and don't use a cover sheet. Just put your name, id
number, date, assignment number in the upper right corner of the first
page. In terms of presentation style, don't really try to do anything
fancy, just stick to reasonable page margins and font sizes. For
writing style, pretend you are writing to someone slightly
less knowledgeable in computer architecture than yourself.
- Hand in during class, or at my office by
3pm on the due date. If I'm not in my office, slip it under the door.
- Late Assignments:
- Assignments turned in between 3pm and the next morning when I
arrive (around 9am) will be penalized 10%.
- Assignments turned in between 9am the morning after and
when the solution
is posted will be penalized 50%.
- Once the solution has
been posted, no credit will be given for late assignments. (see
Medical Exemptions)
- Read the class newsgroup!
should
be your primary resource for questions about lectures, assignments,
etc. I will read the group very often and respond to
questions there. Also, if you have information (or the answer) to
a question posted, feel free to post a response --- remember
posts to the newsgroup count towards class participation.
- You are welcome to stop by my office anytime, but I may
not be there or may be busy. Send email to check if I'm
available. The purpose of office hours is to provide you with
a time when I guarantee that I will be in my office and CS418
will be my top priority. The T.A. (Daniel Chiu) will handle
questions regarding homework marks, for all other questions,
post to the newsgroup, send me email, or stop by.
- All homeworks, handouts, solutions, etc will be installed
on the CS418 web pages:
When something new is installed on the Web, an announcement will be
posted to the newsgroup.
- Many chip and computer manufacturers now have web pages. A
lot of it is fluff, but hard information can sometimes be found.
A few sites have already been linked
into the course web pages; more will be added.
- The newsgroup comp.arch is an
excellent source of
information on computer architecture. The comp.sys.*
hierarchy is for specific machines, such as
comp.sys.powerpc.tech for
the IBM/Motorola/Apple PowerPC.
I strongly encourage you to give me feedback on
what you like and don't like about the course, what you find
easy or difficult, what homework problems you learned from and
which ones you found non-helpful.
Feedback counts towards class participation.
There is an
anonymous suggestion box
for the course accessible through the CPSC418 Web pages.
As scientists and engineers, you
must be able to communicate effectively. Marks will be taken off
for poor writing style and grammatical errors that impede
understanding. Spell check everything that you type!
Discussions about the concepts in the course and the
homework assignments are encouraged, but the assignments
themselves are to be done by each student individually.
Copied problems will receive full negative marks. For
example, a homework problem worth four marks will result in four
marks being subtracted from the student's total. Also, the same
negative mark will be given to the student who gives his/her
assignment to someone else for copying.
Students who cannot attend the midterm or
final examination, or who are unable to complete assignments on
time because of an illness or injury, should obtain a medical
certificate and see me as early as possible, so that appropriate
arrangements can be made. However, medical certificates should not
be used as ``insurance'' against poor marks on examinations. If
you get sick or injured, then get a medical certificate and do not
write the exam, since no medical exemption will be given later.
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Last modified: Jan 1997