Course Details
Course Information Package
Course Unit Title | COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND ARCHITECTURE | ||||||||||||
Course Unit Code | AEEE562 | ||||||||||||
Course Unit Details | |||||||||||||
Number of ECTS credits allocated | 7 | ||||||||||||
Learning Outcomes of the course unit | By the end of the course, the students should be able to:
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Mode of Delivery | Face-to-face | ||||||||||||
Prerequisites | NONE | Co-requisites | NONE | ||||||||||
Recommended optional program components | NONE | ||||||||||||
Course Contents |
The course aims to introduce MSc-level students to advanced concepts in uniprocessor computer organization and architecture.
Instruction Set Architecture (ISA): Specifications, classes, registers, memory addressing and addressing modes. MIPS assembly language. The MIPS, 80x86, and EPIC ISAs.
Performance: Measuring performance and metrics. Benchmarks, performance monitoring and hardware performance counters. Software performance monitoring and software tuning tools.
Single Cycle CPU Design: Pipelining: Pipeline design issues, hazards and optimizations such as forwarding, loop unrolling, branch prediction, register renaming, speculative execution, and out-of-order execution.
Memory hierarchy: The memory wall problem. Semiconductor memory optimizations, locality and memory hierarchy. Advanced cache memory and cache optimizations such as multilevel caches, software and hardware prefetching, thread level prefetchers, victim caches. Virtual memory, protection, and translation.
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Recommended and/or required reading: | |||||||||||||
Textbooks |
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References |
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Planned learning activities and teaching methods |
Students are taught the course material through lectures by means of electronic presentation slides. Homework problems are assigned to strengthen students’ knowledge and understanding.
Students are requested to prepare a literature review assignment and a paper review related on advanced work published. Furthermore, students need to prepare and debate in the class on a topic related to the forefront of computer architecture in the context of the course. | ||||||||||||
Assessment methods and criteria |
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Language of instruction | English | ||||||||||||
Work placement(s) | NO |