I will be available in my office (OHS 303) from 12:30-1:20 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, as well as by appointment. Or try your luck: just stop by and see whether my door is open. You may send me electronic mail at max@gustavus.edu or call me at extension 7466. I'll try to put any updates to my office hours on my web page, so check there if in doubt. (I already know that I will not hold office hours on September 8th, October 7th, and December 1st.)
Attendance is expected for all lab days. (If you turn in a lab report early, you are excused from the remaining days devoted to that lab.) I will excuse up to two absences per student, for any reason. Use yours wisely. If you exceed this allowance, I may reduce your course grade by one letter grade.
The final deadline for rewrites of homework problems is 10:30am on October 10th for chapters 1-4 and appendix B, 10:30am on November 7th for chapters 5 and 6, and 10:30am on December 12th for chapters 7-9.
Unless I indicate that a particular problem must be done individually, you may work on any problem in a group of two or three students. One copy of the solution produced by the team should be turned in, with all team members' names on it. Write “we all contributed fairly to this solution” and have all team members sign under that statement.
There will be two intra-term tests as shown on the syllabus below and a final exam as scheduled by the registrar. If you have a conflict with a testing time, please contact me as soon as possible to make an alternative arrangement.
Exams will be closed-book and mostly closed-notes. You may, however, use a single 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper with hand-written notes for reference. (Both sides of the sheet are OK.)
Any substantive contribution to your solution by another person or taken from a publication should be properly acknowledged in writing. Failure to do so is plagiarism and will necessitate disciplinary action.
The same standards regarding plagiarism apply to team projects as to the work of individuals, except that the author is now the entire team rather than an individual. Anything taken from a source outside the team should be be properly cited.
One additional issue that arises from the team authorship of project reports is that all team members must stand behind all reports bearing their names. All team members have quality assurance responsibility for the entire project. If there is irreconcilable disagreement within the team it is necessary to indicate as much in the report; this can be in the form of a “minority opinion” or “dissenting opinion” section where appropriate.
You are expected to be familiar with the college academic honesty honor code policy and to comply with that policy. If you have any questions about it, please ask.
If you are too sick to complete an assignment on time, you will not be penalized. Simply write “late due to illness” at the top of the assignment, sign your name and hand it in. Other circumstances will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
If you have a learning, psychological, or physical disability for which a reasonable accommodation can be made, I would be happy to refer you to the college's disability services coordinator and to cooperate in the accommodation process. It is generally best if this can be done as soon as possible.
Date | Reading | Topic | Due |
---|---|---|---|
9/2 | Introduction | ||
9/3 | 1 | Computer abstractions and technology | |
9/4 | 2.1-2.6 | Instructions | |
9/5 | Lab 0: Under the hood | ||
9/8 | No class | ||
9/9 | 2.7-2.8 | Procedures and strings in assembly | |
9/10 | 2.9-2.11 | More on assembly programming | |
9/11 | A.1-A.6,A.9 | Assembly programming tools | |
9/12 | 2.13,2.15 | Assembly programming examples | |
9/15 | Lab 1: Elementary assembly programming | ||
9/16 | Lab 1 (continued) | ||
9/17 | Lab 1 (continued) | ||
9/18 | 2.16-2.18 | Yet more on assembly language | |
9/19 | 3.1-3.3 | Two's complement, addition, and subtraction | Lab 1 |
9/22 | Lab 2: More advanced assembly programming | ||
9/23 | 3.4 | Multiplication | |
9/24 | Lab 2 (continued) | ||
9/25 | 3.6 | Floating point arithmetic | |
9/26 | Binary representations and the Chinese connection | ||
9/29 | B.1-B.3 | Combinational Logic | |
9/30 | Lab 2 (continued) | ||
10/1 | B.7-B.11 | Sequential logic | |
10/2 | More on Sequential logic | ||
10/3 | 4 | Performance | |
10/6 | EPA summary | Energy and performance | |
10/7 | No class (attend Nobel Conference) | ||
10/8 | No class (attend Nobel Conference) | ||
10/9 | Lab 2 (continued) | ||
10/10 | Review; catch-up | HW rewrites (1-4, B) | |
10/13 | Intra-term test 1 | ||
10/14 | 5.1-5.3 | A simple datapath | |
10/15 | Lab 2 (continued) | ||
10/16 | 5.4-p.314 | A single-cycle processor | |
10/17 | 5.4 | More on the single-cycle processor | Lab 2 |
10/20 | No class (reading day) | ||
10/21 | No class (reading day) | ||
10/22 | 5.5 | A multiple-cycle processor | |
10/23 | More on the multiple-cycle processor | ||
10/24 | 5.6 | Exceptions | |
10/27 | 6.1 | Pipelining | |
10/28 | 6.2 | A pipelined datapth | |
10/29 | 6.3 | Pipelined control | |
10/30 | 6.4 | Forwarding | |
10/31 | 6.5 | Stalls | |
11/3 | 6.6 | Branches | |
11/4 | Lab 3: Processor performance | ||
11/5 | 6.8-6.12 | Superscalar and advanced pipelining | |
11/6 | Lab 3 (continued) | ||
11/7 | Review; catch-up | HW rewrites (5-6) | |
11/10 | Intra-term test 2 | ||
11/11 | 7.1-7.2 | Caches | |
11/12 | 7.3 | Cache performance | |
11/13 | Lab 3 (continued) | ||
11/14 | 7.4 | Virtual memory | |
11/17 | Lab 3 (continued) | ||
11/18 | 7.5-7.8 | Memory hierarchies | |
11/19 | No class | ||
11/20 | 8.1-8.2 | Disk storage | |
11/21 | Lab 4: Memory system performance | Lab 3 | |
11/24 | Lab 4 (continued) | ||
11/25 | Lab 4 (continued) | ||
11/26 | No class (Thanksgiving) | ||
11/27 | No class (Thanksgiving) | ||
11/28 | No class (Thanksgiving) | ||
12/1 | No class | ||
12/2 | Lab 4 (continued) | ||
12/3 | 8.3 | Networks | |
12/4 | More on networks | ||
12/5 | 8.4 | Buses | Lab 4 |
12/8 | 8.5 | Interfacing input/output | |
12/9 | 9.1-9.3 | Bus-based MIMD architectures | |
12/10 | 9.4-9.6 | Network-based MIMD architectures | |
12/11 | 9.7-9.10 | More on multiprocessors | |
12/12 | Review; catch-up; evaluation | HW rewrites (7-9) |
Course web site: http://gustavus.edu/+max/courses/F2008/MCS-284/