Schedule (Tentative)
The following is my best guess as to the schedule for this term. Slide decks will be available shortly after each lecture.
| Date | Topics | Reading | Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | |||
| Thur. Jan. 17 | Introduction | Chapter 1 | Get an account and set it up; |
| Data Representation | |||
| Tues. Jan. 22 | Binary and Integers | Chapter 2 |
A1: datalab (bit twiddling) out; Main assignment due in 10 days; |
| Thur. Jan. 24 | Integers | A1 trivia due midnight tomorrow; | |
| Tues. Jan. 29 | Floating Point | ||
| Assembly-level Programs | |||
| Thur. Jan. 31 | Overview | Chapter 3 | A1 due midnight tomorrow; A2: the binary bomb out; Main assignment due in 15 days; |
| Tues. Feb. 5 | Data Movement Instructions, Addressing Mode, Compute Instructions, Control Instructions | A2 trivia due, noon; | |
| Thur. Feb. 7 | Control Instructions | ||
| Tues. Feb. 12 | Subroutines | ||
| Thur. Feb. 14 | Data Structures, Buffer Overflow | A2 due midnight tomorrow; A3: the buffer bomb out; Main assignment due in 15 days; | |
| Processor Architecture | |||
| Tues. Feb. 19 | ISA, Instruction Encoding | Chapter 4 intro; “asides” on RISC/CISC; Section 4.2 | A3 trivia due, noon; |
| Thur. Feb. 21 | Circuits | Skim Figures 4.22 and 4.23; Section 4.3 | |
| Tues. Feb. 26 | Circuits, Single-cycle Implementation | Skim Figures 4.40, 4.41, 4.52; Sections 4.4, 4.5 | |
| Thurs. Feb. 28 | Single-Cycle Implementation, Pipelining | Sections 4.5.13, 4.6, 5.7 | A3 due midnight tomorrow; |
| Tues. Mar. 5 | (Advanced) Pipelining | ||
| Thur. Mar. 7 | Midterm Exam | ||
| Mar. 12 & 14 | UR Spring Break | ||
| Tues. Mar. 19 | Advanced Pipelining, Code Optimizations | Chapter 5 |
A4: tuning performance out; Main assignment due in 15 days; |
| The Storage Hierarchy | |||
| Thur. Mar. 21 | Code Optimizations (left-over), Memory Hierarchy | Chapter 5; Chapter 6.1.1 and 6.1.4; skim 6.1.2 and 6.1.3; | A4 trivia due, noon; |
| Tues. Mar. 26 | Caching (by Prof. Chen Ding) | Chapter 6.2, 6.3; study 6.4 carefully | |
| Thur. Mar. 28 | Cache-oriented Performance Tuning (by Prof. Chen Ding) | Chapter 6.5, 6.6 | |
| Exceptional Control Flow | |||
| Tues. Apr. 2 | Interrupts, Exceptions, and Processes (by Prof. John Criswell) | Chapter 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 | A4 due midnight yesterday; A5: Unix shell out; Main assignment due in 13 days; |
| Thur. Apr. 4 | Processes (by Prof. John Criswell) | Chapter 8.4 | A5 trivia due, noon; |
| Tues. Apr. 9 | Processes, Signals | Chapter 8.5 | |
| Virtual Memory | |||
| Thur. Apr. 11 | Address Translation | Chapter 9.1 ~ 9.6 | |
| Tues. Apr. 16 | Advanced Address Translation, Core i7/Linux Case Study | Chapter 9.6, 9.7 | A5 due midnight yesterday; A6: memory allocation out; Main assignment due in 14 days; |
| Thur. Apr. 18 | Memory Management | Chapter 9.8, 9.9 | A6 trivia due, noon; |
| Tues. Apr. 23 | Advanced Memory Management | Chapters 9.8, 9.9, 9.10 | |
| Concurrency | |||
| Thur. Apr. 25 | Threads, Semaphores, and Hardware Support | Chapter 12 (skim all) | |
| Tues. Apr. 30 | Victory Lap | A6 due midnight May 2; | |
| Wed. May 8 | Final Exam | 19:15, WH 1400 | |