CS 2461 Computer Architecture I - Fall 2020 | CS 2461 Computer Architecture I

This is an introductory course on Computer organization and computer systems. The course will expose the student to the different layers in a computer system and examine the working of a computer system at these different levels. It will expose the student to the low level details of how machines are assembled and the tools to program them – it will expose what really happens when your programs are run, thereby providing you with the intellectual tools needed to solve problems when things go wrong. In addition to the theoretical concepts, the course through the lab section will provide an exposure to systems skills using various tools and focusing on issues such as performance and correctness. The course will take a bottom-up approach: it will start with the basic components of a computer system, machine representation of data, digital logic circuits, instruction sets and assembly programming, and moves to a discussion of how C programs are translated to the machine level. The course also introduces systems programming concepts such as memory management, file systems, safe programming, system stack, debugging and performance tuning of programs. The lecture, and some lab sessions, will consist of in-class activities and students will be required to work in groups.

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Class Resources

Schedule

Introduction	Materials
Week 0 Chapter 1	Course Logistics Meet the instruction team Course Intro Syllabus-Video
Week 1- Data Representation Chapter 2	Data Representation1 Two’s Complement Representation -Video Operations [Video]
Lab Week 1	Introduction to Circuits(Notes posted on Blackboard- Ohms Law) Getting Stated with TinkerCad

Digital Logic	Materials
Transistors & Logic Gates (Week 2) Chapter 3	Devices-Transistors How Transistors work (Video) Building Gates from Transistors (Video) Boolean Functions & Combinational Logic Circuits Truth Table to Logic Circuit - Video CedarLogic Circuits for Week2 LogiSim Circuits for Week2 Cedar Logic Circuits Set1 - figures Karnaugh Maps and Circuit Design- Review
Combinational Logic Circuits (Week 3) Chap.3 Data types & Bitwise in C	Review Karnaugh Maps (Reading) Combinational Logic Devices Decoders-Video Multiplexers-Video Cedar Logic Circuits-Week3 Logisim Circuits Week3 Circuits with Feedback-Latches [Video…coming soon to a theater near you!] Review: Data rep and Bitwise in C In Class C exercises (Bitwise)
Sequential Logic (Week 4) Chapter 3	Sequential Logic & Finite State Machines Clocked Circuits - Flip Flops (Video) CedarLogic-Examples of Sequential Logic Devices Introduction to Finite State Machines (video) Example:FSM Design(video) CedarLogic-Examples: Finite State Machines
Week 2 Lab	Design of Combinational Logic circuit using Integrated Circuits
Week 3 Lab	Using DIP Switches in Logic Circuits
Week 4 Lab	Design of Logic Devices - project 1
Week 5 Lab	Review: Example Sequential Logic Devices in CedarLogic , Project 2 discussions.

ISA and Assembly Programming	Materials
von Neuman Model (Week 5)Chap. 4-5 LC3 Instruction Set Architecture(ISA)	von Neuman Architecture and Instruction Execution von Neuman model and Instruction Processing Cycle (Video) LC3 Instruction Set LC3 ISA-Operate Instructions Dataflow (Video) LC3 ISA-Memory and Branch Instructions (Video)
Processor Datapath (week 6) Chapter 5, Appendix A,C	LC3 Datapath Design [Example Datapath Requirements for an LC3 instruction(Video)] Example: Datapath design in Cedar Logic Design of a processor datapath (Example) Inclass Exercises-October 9
Assembly Programming (Chap 6-7) Exam 1 - week 7 (October 13)	Programming in Assembly [Video] Exam Covers material upto (including) LC3 ISA
Assembly Programming Weeks 8-9 Chapters 7-10	I/O and Traps in LC3 [Video] Subroutines/Functions in Assembly [Video] Inclass Exercises Oct.20 Stacks and Interrupts [Video] Inclass Exercises Oct.22
Labs Weeks 6-9 Lab Week 7 Lab Week 8	Getting Started with LC3 simulator [Video] Writing an Assembly Program [Video] Assembly program using Subroutines

Implementing C programs on Machine ISA	Materials
Running high level programs (Week 9) Quick Review of C (Week 9) Chapters 11,12,13 Run-time Stack	Translation Process and Role of Compiler Run-time Stack Review of Run-time stack - Video
C programs on LC3 (weeks 10-12) Activation Records and Function Calls (Chap 14) Arrays and Pointers (Chap 16) Dynamic Memory (Heap)Chap.19	Functions- Notes Functions-Part1 (Video) Arrays and Pointers Structures Dynamic Memory-Malloc 1-dimensional Dynamic Array Code 2-D Dynamic Array - Question Review: Examples of function call & memory state(Video)
Labs Weeks 10-12	Programming in C GDB Tutorial(Video) Valgrind Tutorial (Video) File I/O Lab 11 Files Lab 12 Files

Exam 2

All material upto Dynamic Memory in C

Program Performance and Computer Architecture	Materials
Performance Optimization (Weeks 12-14) Memory Hierarchy Code Optimization	Performance metrics & Memory Hierarchy Code Optimization Techniques
Labs Weeks 12-14	Project 5,6 discussions
Course Summary	Course Summary: Real Architectures [Video]