CS 2461 Computer Architecture I - Fall 2022 | 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.

Announcements

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Class Resources

Piazza - You will be added to the class forum
LC3 Download Instructions
LC3 Download Page
LC3 Tools Guide
Git Instructions & Video Demo
CEDAR Logic Instructions & Video Demo
Logism Instructions & Video Demo
Visual Studio Code Instructions & Video Demo

Schedule

Introduction	Materials
Week 0 Chapter 1	Course Logistics and Syllabus
Week 1- Data Representation Chapter 2	Data Representation (Video) Two’s Complement Representation (Video) Logic Operators
Lab Week 1	Introductions and Review

Digital Logic	Materials
Transistors & Logic Gates (Week 2) Chapter 3	Devices-Transistors (Video) How Transistors work (Video) Building Gates from Transistors Boolean Functions & Combinational Logic Circuits (Video) Truth Table to Logic Circuit CedarLogic Introduction-Circuits: Set1 Karnaugh Maps and Circuit Design- Review
Combinational Logic Circuits (Week 3) Chap.3 Data types & Bitwise in C	Combinational Logic Devices Video- Decoders (Video) Multiplexers CedarLogic Circuits - Set2: Comb Logic Devices Circuits with Feedback-Latches CedarLogic Circuits-Latches
Sequential Logic (Week 4) Chapter 3	Sequential Logic & Finite State Machines CedarLogic- Sequential Circuits (Video) Clocked Circuits - Flip Flops (Video) Introduction to Finite State Machines (Video) Example:FSM Design
C and Data Representation (Week 5)	Review: C Bitwise operations Exercises-Week5 (bitwise ops in C)
Week 2 Lab	Review - Logic circuits
Week 3 Lab	Logic Circuits and C bitwise operations
Week 4 Lab	Sequential Logic circuits Working with Hardware
Week 5 Lab	Review Sequential Logic (Finite state machines). Review C bitwise operations (Project 2) Install LC3 tools - see links to LC3 download instructions under Class Resources on this page. Example Sequential Logic Devices in CedarLogic - For Project3 reference

ISA and Assembly Programming	Materials
von Neuman Model (Week 5-6) Chap. 4-5 LC3 Instruction Set Architecture(ISA)	von Neuman Architecture and Instruction Execution (Video) von Neuman model and Instruction Processing Cycle LC3 Instruction Set (Video) LC3 ISA-Operate Instructions Dataflow (Video) LC3 ISA-Memory and Branch Instructions LC3 Machine Program Examples/Exercise Jeopardy Exam Review
LC3 Tools (Chap 6-7) Exam 1 - October 11 (Tuesday) - week 7)	Exam Covers material upto (including) LC3 ISA
Processor Datapath (week 7) Chapter 5, Appendix A,C	LC3 Datapath Design (Video) Datapath Design - Overview of LC3 Datapath (Video) Datapath: Implementing Fetch, Decode, Execute (Add) (Video) Datapath: Implementing Load and Control Unit(FSM) Design Example: Datapath design in Cedar Logic Example- Designing a processor datapath
Assembly Programming Weeks 8-9 Chapters 7-10	Intro to Assembly Programming Example1 Assembly Exercise1 Iinput-Output/Traps and Subroutines in Assembly(LC3) IO Example1 IO Example2 Subroutines in LC3 Example Subroutine Exercise-Ques3 Exercise-Ques4 Data for ques4.asm Stacks and Interrupts
Week 6 Lab	Week 6 Lab
Labs Weeks 7 Lab Week 8 Lab Week 9 Lab Week 10	Getting started with LC3 tools. Install LC3 tools - see links to LC3 download instructions under Class Resources on this page. Week7 Lab: Getting Started with LC3 Tools Example Week 8 Lab: More Assembly- XOR exercise, Project 3 Review Exercise: Assembly programming Assembly: Using Subroutines Subroutine Example2

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 Test Scoping rules in C 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-In Class Exercise Functions-Part1 (Video) Arrays and Pointers Arrays/Pointers- Group Exercise code C to LC3 code examples Structures Dynamic Memory-Malloc 1-dimensional Dynamic Array Code 2-D Dynamic Array - Question Review: Examples of function call & memory state(Video)
Labs Weeks 11-12	Programming in C GDB Tutorial(Video) Valgrind Tutorial (Video) File I/O Lab 11 Files Lab 12 Files GDB Valgrind Slides Using GDB in VSCode

Exam 2 - Nov.17

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 Notes on Memory Blocking
Labs Weeks 13-14	Project 5,6 discussions
Course Summary	Course Summary: Real Architectures [Video]