Systems Architecture I
Exam2
Exam 4
- Computer Organization and Design
- by David Patterson and John Hennessy
- published by Morgan Kaufmann
- ISBN: 1-55860-438-6
Goals of this course
To acquaint students with:
- low-level design and organization
of a modern microprocessor.
- the underlying principals in designing processors:
- von Neumann machines
- the RISC verses the CISC philosophy
- implementation details of selected representative microprocessors:
- the MIPS processor (used in Silicon Graphics workstations) and
closely related to the PowerPC and Sparc processors.
- the Pentium processor used in a majority of PC's today.
By implementation details, I mean the details needed to write assembly
language programs for these processors.
- data storage and
organization (fixed verses floating point, the IEEE standard for
floating point).
By the end of this semester, the student should understand some of the
basic issues involved in processor design and know how to write
assembly language programs.
Programming will be done on the SPIM
simulator (a link for downloading it appears below). This program provides
a fairly user-friendly simulation of a MIPS processor.
Grading
There will be at least five examinations, the last one being
cumulative (i.e., covering material from the entire semester). There
will also be occasional graded homeworks.
Each exam will receive a
raw grade (0-100) and a curved grade (0-4). The final grade for the
course is computed by averaging the curved grades, subject
to the rules
- the last (cumulative) exam is counted twice.
- the lowest of the exam grades is dropped (this might be a whole
regular exam or half of the last exam).
- homeworks are given a weight of 1/10 of an exam.
The final (weighted) average (a number
between 0 and 4) is converted into a letter grade using the rule
A >= 3.8
2.8 <= B < 3.8
1.5 <= C < 2.8
0.5 <= D < 1.5
F < 0.5
Note: By this rule, two A's averaged together with one B results in a
grade of B.
Exams will be administered on web pages. Students take exams by
entering answers into a fill-out form and clicking the submit button.
At the discretion of the instructor, exams may be left up on the web
pages after the deadline for submitting them, but the instructor
reserves the right to deduct points from late exams.
If a student
feels that an exam has not been graded correctly, he or she may
request that it be regraded by printing out the exam and
marking the question that has been misgraded.
Answers that are not original (i.e., copied from another source) will
receive a grade of 0, regardless of their validity. Students are urged
not to consult textbooks or other students while taking exams.
Schedule of Exams
- First exam, April 5, due April 7
- Second exam April 19, due April 21
- Third exam, May 10, due May 12
- Fourth exam, May 24, due May 26
- Fifth exam, May 31, due June 2
Assessment of progress
The instructor will send out periodic emails to students listing
all of the grades that have been posted for them (exams and homework) and
showing them what their final grade would be if computed at the
time of the email (without the lowest exam grade being dropped).