Where and When
Instructor:
Jean-Loup Baer, 211 Sieg Hall, 685-1376, baer@cs
Office hours: M 3:30-4:30 Th 11:00 - 12:00 or by appointment.
Teaching Assistants:
Vadim Lobanov 226 Sieg vadim@cs Offices hours TBA
Tapan Parikh 226 Sieg tapan@cs Offices hours TBA
Course Goal:
From the programmer's point of view, "the hardware" is given by its
architectural specification. We
will look at the general topic of computer architecture,
using the MIPS R2000 as a specific example,
and its most obvious exposure to the programmer,
assembly language programming. We will use the SMOK simulator
to become more familiar with processor implementation at the building
block level (how to implement the building blocks
was covered in CSE 370, a prerequisite to this class).
Text:
D.Patterson and J.Hennessy Computer Organization & Design:
The Hardware/Software Interface 2nd Edition, 1998
Homework:
The assignments will include assembly language programming assignments
using SPIM (a MIPS assembly language simulator), simulations
of a simple machine using SMOK, and
problem sets from the book. There
will be assignments every week (well almost every week).
You can discuss the assignments with each other but you should
do the actual work by yourselves unless we aks you to do them in teams.
Please hand in your assignments on the due date in class. Late assignments will not be either not accepted or severely penalized unless you talked about it to the isntructor beforehand.
Grading:
There will be one midterm (time TBA) and one final, June 11 at 2:30
Homework 40%; midterm 20%; final 40%. These percentages
are approximate. Intangibles may arise. Class participation
is a bonus. (Class participation is strongly encouraged.
Don't be afraid to ask questions: dumb questions do not
exist. If I ask you a question and you don't know, just say so.
That's no problem.
I will certainly answer some of your questions also by "I don't know!".)
e-mail and WWW
We will have a class mailing list and we will communicate
often through e-mail. Feel free to send the Tapan, Vadim or me questions.
We will
forward questions and answers to the whole class if appropriate.
Check the WWW CSE378 home page often.