Course Syllabus
Department of Computer Science
The George Washington University
Csci 211.10 - Computer System Architecture


General Course Information
Meeting time:
Classroom:
Class Webpage:
Credits:
6:10PM -- 8:40PM, Wednesday
GELM B04
Class Webpage
3
Instructor Information
Name:
Office:
Tel:
fax:
Email:
Office hours:
Xiuzhen Cheng
Academic Center, Room 716
202 994 9751
202 994 4875
cheng AT gwu.edu
1:00PM-3:00PM on Tuesday and Thursday, or by appoinment.
TA Information
Name:
Office:
Tel:
Email:
Office hours:
Dengyuan Wu
Academic Center, Room 720G
202 994 8229
andrewwu AT gwmail.gwu.edu
3:00PM -- 5:00PM, Friday
Course Description and Objective
This is an introductory graduate level course on Computer and Processor Architectures. The course will cover a range of topics in the area of computer architecture with the objective of providing an exposure to current and emerging trends in Computer Architectures, focusing on performance and the hardware/software interface. The emphasis is on studying and analyzing fundamental issues in architecture design and their impact on performance. The course will have a mix of theory, hardware, and software -- it will not conduct in-depth case studies of different architectures. To enable a better understanding of the concepts, hands on exposure to the interplay between hardware and software will be provided through projects that require the use of a processor simulator -- the simplescalar simulator.

Objective: Understanding the design techniques, machine structures, technology factors, evaluation methods that will determine the form of computers in 21st Century

Textbooks
"Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", 4th Edition, by David Patterson and John Hennessy, Morgan Kauffman.   --- Required

"Computer Organization & Architecture", by William Stallings, Prentice Hall.   --- Recommended Reference

"Computer Organization and Design: The hardware/software interface", 3rd Ed., by J. Hennessy and D. Patterson, Morgan Kauffman.   --- Recommended Reference

Prerequisites
Programming and Data structures, Discrete Math (CS103, CS123), and a basic knowledge of Computer organization.
Method of Instruction
The course will be taught mainly through lectures and in-class discussion. You are required to actively participate the in-class discussion!

There will be six homework assignments, five of them will be counted.

We will have three projects, one midterm and one final. The exams will be close-book.

All the homework assignments must be done individually. Projects can be done in a group of up to three students. No late homework/project will be accepted.

Method of Evaluation
Grades will be computed based on the following weights:
       Homework assignments 25%
       Projects 15%
       Midterm exam (March 3) 30%
       Final exam (April 21) 30%

Final letter grade will be curved based on the distribution of the overall scores. However, you may expect the following tentative grading scale to evaluate your performance: A's,A-'s:90-100%, B+'s,B's,B-'s:80-89%, C+'s,C's,C-'s:70-79%, D+'s,D's,D-'s:60-69%.

If you have questions regarding the grading of your homeworks, project or exams, you MUST come to see either the instructor or the TA WITHIN ONE WEEK after the date your homeworks, projects or exams have been returned to you.

Make-up policy:
Do not miss exams - there is no make-up policy. However, if for some unavoidable and valid (in the judgment of the instructor) reasons you have to miss an exam, speak with me before the exam.

Course Outline
       Topics Chapter in Text
       Fundamentals of Computer Design Chapter 1
       Organization and Pipeline Review Appendix B and A
       Instruction-Level Parallelism and Its Exploitation Chapter 2
       Limits on Instruction-Level Parallelism Chapter 3
       Cache and Virtual Memory Overview Appendix C
       Multiprocessors and Thread-Level Parallelism Chapter 4
       Memory Design Chapter 5
       Storage Systems Chapter 6
Academic Integrity Policy
All examinations, projects, and other graded work products and assignments are to be completed in accordance with GW Code of Academic Integrity and CS Department Policy on Academic Integrity.