CSC 1200 Computer Organization

Syllabus

Professor: 

               Dr. Lillian N. Cassel 
               162A Mendel Hall 
               +1 610 519 - 7341
cassel@acm.org

Assistant:

Dave Chimitt
234B Mendel 
Monday 1-3
Friday 10-noon

Office hours : 

                               Monday 1:30-2:30
                               Tuesday 3-4:30
                               Wednesday 12:30-1:30
                                Other hours by appointment 
                          or drop in if the door is open
         Villanova University Academic Integrity Policy and Procedures
Textook  Schedule Submit reading summary Course requirements 
and  Grading

Course Requirements
 
 

Assumed abilities:  Programming and problem solving as obtained in CSC1051/1052 or equivalent courses
Basic digital logic as obtained in CSC 1300 or the equivlent
Preparation for class Assigned reading must be done before class
After reading the assigned material, each student will fill in a READING SUMMARY FORM
That form asks you to list the two or three key points of the assigned reading and a few questions that arose as a result of your reading.
You must submit the READING SUMMARY FORM no later than 8 am of class day.
You should also think about examples for the points you note and the questions you raise so you can discuss them with others in the class
Normal class routine Most classes will begin with a review of the key points of the reading identified by class members.
Students will work in small groups to consider the points raised, supplement them if necessary, remove repeated points, and construct a clear summary of the reading.  Examples to illustrate each point will be included in the summary.  After the groups have finished consideration of the readings, the class will choose one or two of the summaries to be retained as part of the class page.  These summaries will be available and useful for review during the semester and at examination times.

Textbook:

Structured Computer Organization by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Fourth Edition
Prentice Hall Publisher  1999

Grading

 
Requirement Number Points Each Total Points
Summary of assigned reading 
and class participation		 about 20 10 200
Homework exercises about 15 varies 200
Examinations 3 100 300
Final Examination 1 200 200
Article summaries or 
one article summary and 
one Logic Works Exercise		 2 50 100
TOTAL possible     1000

Homework

There will be homework every week, sometimes twice in one week.   The purpose of the homework is to give you a chance to exercise the knowledge gained from the recent class material. Some exam questions will closely resemble homework problems. Most homework problems will come from the main text book. Each homework question will be worth up to three points.  One point for a modest, but reasonable attempt to answer the question, one more point for a good attempt that gets close to the solution, and one more point if the answer is correct.  A few small programming problems will be worth more points than standard homework problems.

In class exams

There will be three exams. The dates in the class schedule are tentative and we can change them if it appears in the best interest of the class.  Material on the tests will come from the text book and from supplementary materials and from class notes.

Article summaries (See also format information<----very important information)

In order to see what is current in the area of computer architecture, you will read and summarize two articles from recent literature. These may be articles in technical magazines or journals. They may be from Web sites. The articles must be at least three full pages long, not counting figures. In case of web pages, the amount of text must be equivalent to three magazine pages (three pages of very large font is not enough). The articles must be recent - not more than one year old. The articles must be relevant to the course. In particular, look for updates on the architecture information in the text book. Information on the newest Intel or Motorola chips is a good subject. Articles about pipelining, RISC architecture, parallel machines,  memories, etc. are all appropriate. If you have any doubt about the suitablility of an article, let me look at it before you use it.

  Tentative Schedule

to be revised as needed during the semester
 
Week
number		 Date Topic Reading due before class Homework due 
1 26 Aug Goals & Objectives
Resources
Procedures
What is this course about?
Tanenbaum's layered view of computer organization		    
2 31 Aug
2 Sept		 Hardware - software relationship
Brief history of computer architecture
Processors		 Tuesday (T) Chapter 1 
Class summary
Thursday (R) Chapter 2.1-2.1.3
Class summary		 T- 1.1, 2, 6, 7, 9
R-2.1, 2.3
3 7, 9 Sept Instruction and Processor level parallelism
Binary numbers		 T -- Rest of 2.1,  Appendix A
Class summary		 R -- A.4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13,14
4 14, 16 Sept Secondary memory and I/O T -- 2.2, -- 2.4
Class summary		 R -- 2.12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 26, 34
5 21, 23 Sept Exam 1 on Chapters 1 and 2 and Appendix A
Basic digital logic
Logic Works simulator		 Quiz answers
3.1 -- 3.2.2 		  
6  28, 30 Sept Arithmetic and clock circuits; memory 3.2.3 -- 3.3
 Submitted questions and some answers
Class summary		  R -- 3.1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 (use Logic Works) 12, 
Optional bonus: 3.14
7 5, 7 Oct Floating point numbers
Chips, buses, examples, interfacing		 Appendix B
3.4 -- 3.8
Submitted questions and some answers
Class summary		  R-- B.1, B.2, B.6
3.15, 21, 22, 34,  35, 
Due Oct. 28:  Choose 3.43 or 3.45
8 12, 14 Oct Microarchitecture
Extra details for understanding 
Figures 4-14 and  4-17		 4.1-4.3
 Submitted questions and some answers
Class summary		 4.6,7,11
First Article summary due Thursday
Break 18-22 Oct    
9  26, 28 Oct Microarchitecture Design 4.4-4.7  
10 2, 4 Nov Extended discussion of Microarchitecture Design Class summary  Choose any 3 problems from the 4.18-4.32
11 9, 11 Nov Exam 2  Chapters 3 and 4 and Appendix B  
12 16, 18 Nov Instruction Set Architecture; Instruction formats, addressing 5.1 - 5.4
 Submitted questions and their answers		  Second article summary due
5.2,6,9,13,14
13 23 Nov  ISA - Instruction Types  5.5 - 5.9  5.23,25,26,33 due Tuesday 11/30
14 30 Nov, 
2 Dec		 Exam 3    
15 7, 9 Dec Review and revisit topics  
   18 Dec.
2:30 pm		 Final Exam    

Here are the correct answers for the table given as a practice quiz earlier.  The handout had some inconsistencies in the treatment of negative numbers.

Decimal Two's complement Hexadecimal Excess 127
27 0001 1011 1B 1001 1010
-121 1000 0111 87 0000 0110
-94 1010 0010 A2 0010 0001
-92 1010 0100 A4 0010 0011

If you wish to substitute a Logic Works exercise for one or the other of the article summaries, here is a sample problem.  If you wish to do a different problem, talk to me about it.  We can be flexible.
Design and construct a circuit that will input two numbers from  keypads (look for an appropriate device in Logic Works), add those two numbers and display the result (again look for an appropriate display device).  You only need to deal with one digit of input from each keypad.  Make sure the output will display any possible result from these inputs.