Computer Science 397 Computer Organization and Assembly Language

Syllabus

Fall 1995

Instructor:

Brian L. Stuart

Office:

Math 419

Office Phone:

726-3725

Office Hours:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9:00--10:00am. As usual, you are free to drop in any time or to make an appointment.

Text:

Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software Interface by D. A. Patterson & J. L. Hennessy.

Objectives:

Patterson & Hennessy have produced a new textbook which directly addresses why we study computer architecture and assembly language in the modern era of computing. There exists an interface between the software programmers write and the machines engineers design. Understanding this interface (and what's happening on the other side) is vital to producing good machine designs and good software designs. The perspective gained here will be particularly useful in advanced courses such as Operating Systems. Because our curriculum is focused on software design, our aim in this course is to understand how the hardware defines the environment in which our programs run. We want to know why that environment is the way it is and how we can most effectively utilize it.

Approximate Schedule of Topics:

Below is a list of topics to be covered during this course.

• A perspective on the current state of computer system development
• Computer performance
• Assembly language: instructions, data, assemblers
• Computer arithmetic
• Computer organization
  • The CPU
  • Memory
  • I/O
  • Pipelining
  • Parallel Processing

Grading:

As usual, the bulk of your grade will be based on projects. There will be a number of assembly language programming projects, a programming project related to computer architecture and a paper project on computer design. Some of these projects will be multi-phase. The approximate breakdown will be as follows:

All work will be conducted according to Rhodes' Honor Code.

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