Lectures: MWF 10:30 - 11:20, 001 Stanger
Exams: There will be one midterm (25%) and one final
examination (35%). The final in Spring 2012 will be Friday May 11, 9:00
AM.
Assignments: Homework assignments and programs are
worth 40% of your grade. You should do these with a
partner, and one grade will be given to both people in each
group. All programs should be written using SPIM, a simulator for
the MIPS architecture. You can download your
own copy of SPIM for whatever computer you own. PCSpim, an old
version for PCs, should already be loaded on the machines in the lab
and it is what I use, but there is a new multi-platform version called
QtSpim. Whatever version you download and use, make sure that the
settings are set as shown below so that the programs I run in class
will all work.
You should email your assignments to cs303@stonehill.edu, and not to
my personal email. Late
assignments will not be accepted or graded. Please send
each program in a separate text file attachment. For problem
sets, you should hand them into me personally
(before midnight of the day they are due). Do not leave anything
under my door or you may not get credit for handing it in on
time. Finally, read our department's academic
integrity guidelines before you hand in any programs.
Warning about the book's exercises: The book's problems
may seem vague and/or difficult at first glance. Ask me if you
have any doubts about how to do a problem. I will review any
solution one on one or in class, as you prefer.
Course Description: What
goes
on
behind
the
scenes
after
you
compile your program? Students learn how a computer is put
together, and the relationship between the hardware and the instruction
sets. We study the MIPS machine language and the high level
organization of a fully pipelined modern RISC machine: including:
ALU design, CPU design, pipelining, memory organization, cache and
virtual memory, I/O, and methods of measuring the effectiveness of
these features.
Special Dates: Class on Friday, April 13 is cancelled
due to Passover. I will be in France on Friday March 2. I may
schedule the midterm on that date.
Reference
Links
Download SPIM
SPIM
Quick Reference MIPS
Opcode LookUp MIPS
Floating
Point
and IEEE 754 Online Binary
Calculator
Sample Programs
multiply
helloworld avg
io strings traverse_array branches loop palindrome long_mult sort
address modes
Week |
Topics |
Reading
|
| 1 | CISC versus RISC. Measuring Performance. Why do Programmers Need to Know About Computer Architecture? |
Chapter 1, Online |
2-3 |
Intro to SPIM Simulator Basics: Instructions, Data, and Directives. Basic MIPS Assembly Language: Arithmetic and Memory Operations, Control Structures, Arrays. |
Chapters 2 and 3 |
| 4 | Data Representation - Two's
complement, Sign Magnitude, Floating Point, ASCII. |
Chapter 2 |
| 5-6 | More MIPS: Registers and Address Modes. Data Structures, Stacks, Procedures, Stack Frames, Run-time Stack, Parameter Passing. |
Chapter 2, Appendix B |
| 7 |
Machine Language and MIPS Instruction Formats. Assemblers - One and Two Pass. |
Chapter 2, Appendix B |
8 |
Midterm Examination. Exceptions |
Date: Friday, March 2 Appendix B |
9-10 |
Data Path and Control Architecture - Single versus Multi-cycle. Hardwired vs. Microprogramming. |
Chapter 4, Appendix D (on disk) |
| 11-12 | Pipelining - An Efficient CPU, Performance Measures, Hazard Handling. Implementation. |
Chapter 4 |
| 13-14 | Memory Architecture - Hierarchical Structures: Cache and Virtual Memory. |
Chapter 5 |
| 15 | I/O Architecture - Design and Performance. Review |
Chapter 6 |