CS 480G (same as EE-480) - Advanced Computer Architecture
Credits: 3
Course Description
This course focuses on advanced computer architectures and low-level system software. Topics include RISC architectures, vector and multiprocessor architectures, multiprocessor memory architectures, and multiprocessor interconnection networks. Peripheral devices such as disk arrays, NICs, video/audio devices are covered. Topics also include device drivers, interrupt processing, advanced assembly language programming techniques, assemblers, linkers, and loaders.
Prereqs: CS/EE-380 and engineering standing.
Needed Skills
Students will become acquainted with recent computer architectures and I/O devices as well as the basic software required to drive/manage these types of advanced hardware. Students will be introduced to the language-to-executable translation processes required to map application software to the underlying hardware architecture.
Additional Comments
The objective of this course is both to study advanced computer architectures and to examine the computer, peripherals, and low-level system software as an integrated subject.
Throughout the course, the concept of a complete system consisting of asynchronous interactions between concurrently executing hardware components and device driver software will be emphasized to illustrate the behavior of a computer system as a whole.
The course will be heavily project-oriented with 3-5 major programming projects that implement/simulate a particular architecture and assemble/link/load code for that architecture.
This course was proposed by CS prior to the proposal of a computer engineering program by electrical engineering. The class has never been offered and is currently being reevaluated by both departments to design a course to be appropriate as either an advanced technical elective for ee and cs students and as a core class for those in the computer engineering track. The course description above and the textbooks below were representative of the originally proposed class.
Possible Textbook
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach.
J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson.
San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. 1990.
Advanced Computer Architecture,
K. Hwang,
McGraw Hill, 1993
High-performance Computer Architecture, 3rd edition,
H. S. Stone,
Addison-Wesley, 1993.