CS232: Computer Organizations

Pace University

Course Staff

• Instructor: Dr. Jun Yuan
• Teaching Assistant: Ms. Iris Nguyen

The content of this course changes as technology evolves, to keep up to date with changes follow me on GitHub.

• Section 20102. Spring 2021
• Lecture: Monday & Wednesday, 3:30 PM, Lecture Zoom Link
• Recitation: Friday, 2:00 PM, Recitation Zoom Link
• Make an appointment with course staff: Scheduling Jun's office hours or Scheduling Iris's office hours

Course Description

This course facilitates the development of a deep understanding of the hardware environment of computing devices and the interface it provides to the associated software. Students need to understand computer organization to develop software artifacts that can achieve high performance through their awareness of concurrency, consistency, parallelism, and latency. They will acquire an understanding and appreciation of a computer system’s characteristics, performance, interactions, and functional components as well as the challenge of harnessing parallelism to sustain performance improvements. In selecting a system to use, students will be able to understand the tradeoff among various components, such as CPU clock speed, cycles per instruction, memory size, average memory access time, pipelining, vector processing, and multiprocessors, and multicomputers.

Textbook

• [Required] [DIS] Dive into Systems https://diveintosystems.org/
• [Recommended] [CSAPP] Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (2nd Edition) (ISBN-10: 0136108040)
• [Recommended] [CPABG] C Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide, 3rd ed., Aug 2013, (ISBN 978-0789751980)
• [Recommended] [TECS] The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles (ISBN:9780262640688)

Objectives

• Demonstrate how to convert numerical data from one format to another.
• Discuss the many equivalent representations of computer functionality, including logical expressions and gates, and use mathematical expressions to describe the functions of simple combinational and sequential circuits.
• Design the basic building blocks of a computer: arithmetic-logic unit (gate-level), registers (gate-level), central processing unit (register transfer-level), and memory (register transfer-level).
• Write and analyze Assembly language program segments.
• Explain why instruction set architecture and stored program concepts are important design principles.
• Describe and show the relative utility of how negative integers are stored in sign-magnitude and two's-complement representations.
• Explain how fixed-and floating-point number representations affect accuracy and precision.
• Understand the basic concepts of interrupts/exceptions and explain how interrupts are used to implement I/O control and data transfers.
• Describe instruction-level and data-level parallelisms, and pipeline hazards and how they are managed.
• Explain how instructions are represented at both the machine and the Assembly language levels.
• Identify and discuss the main types of memory technology (e.g., SRAM, DRAM, flash, and magnetic disk) and their relative costs and performance.
• Analyze and describe how the use of memory hierarchy (e.g., cache, main memory, and virtual memory) is used to reduce effective memory latency.
• Understand how a program’s locality of reference property supports memory hierarchy design.

Syllabus

This syllabus presents the expected class schedule, due dates, and reading assignments. Check current syllabus. Check this page often for the most up-to-date schedule.

Live Schedule

Week	Content	Recording	Reading	Recitation	Deadline
Week 1 First class on 01/25/2021	Week 1: Course Intro and Logistics Part 1.1: Course Overview Part 1.2: Admin and Logistics Part 1.3: Intro to binaries Part 1.4: 2's complements Part 1.5: Number systems and number conversion	1-1 Course Overview & Logistics 1-2 Intro to binaries and number systems 1-3 Recitation	Syllabus Chapter 4 through 4.4.1	Problems	None
Week 2 Week of 02/01/2021	Week 2: Toward C Part 2.1: IO and Compilation Part 2.2: C types and Declaration Part 2.3: Conditionals and Loops Part 2.4: Functions Part 2.5: Arrays and strings	2-1. Wrapping up hex and moving to C 2-2. C vs Java, Part 1 2-3. Recitation	Chapter 1 through 1.6	C Exercises	Assignment#1 due 02/06/2021 Assignment#2 is out
Week 3 Week of 02/08/2021	Week 3: Deep Dive into C Part 3.1: Pointers and functions Part 3.2: Dynamic Memory Allocation Part 3.3: GDB debugging	3-1. dive into C pointers 3-2. More pointers and dynamic memory 3-3. Recitation	Chapter 2 through 2.5 Chapter 3.1 gdb	Scope & C pointers	Assignment#2 due 02/13/2021 Assignment#3 is out
Week 4 Week of 02/15/2021	Week 4: C pointers, structs and strings Part 4.1: Strings and arrays Part 4.2: Structs Part 4.3: Dynamic Memory Allocation	4-1.C strings and more memory layout 4-2. C structs and Valgrind 4-3. Recitation	Chapter 2.5 through 2.7 Chapter 3.3 Valgrind	C pointers and meomory management	Assignment#3 due 02/21/2021 Assignment#4 is out
Week 5 Week of 02/22/2021	Week 5: Advanced C Part 5.1: Little Endian Part 5.2: C library Part 5.3: Study case of vector Part 5.4:Floating point representation	5-1.github & recap on exercises 5-2. Study case of vector: linking and compilation 5-3. Recitation	Chapter 2.8 through 2.9 Chapter 4.7 through 4.8	Trace your code in memory	Assignment#4 due 02/28/2021 Assignment#5 is out
Week 6 Week of 03/01/2021	Week 6: C wrap up and intro to logic gates Part 6.1: Shared objects Part 6.2: Floating point numbers Part 6.3: Review Part 6.4: Intro to logic gates	6-1.Shared libraries wrap-up and floating point 6-2. Review and intro to logic gates 6-3. Recitation	Chapter 5.1 through 5.4 Chapter 4.8	No new exercises/submission, review time	Nothing due. Catch-up week before midterm Bonus assignment is out
Week 7 Week of 03/08/2021	Week 7: Intro to computer architecture and midterm Part 7.1: Intro to computer architecture Part 7.2: Midterm review Part 7.3: Midterm exam in class	7-1.Intro to computer architecture and midterm 7-2. Midterm Exam in-class 7-3. Recitation	Chapter 5.1 through 5.4	Recitation#7 slides Struct and pointer exercises: Linked List Iris's solution	Bonus assignment due 03/14
Week 8 Week of 03/15/2021	Week 8: Combinational Logic Gates Part 8.1: Midterm Retrospection Part 8.2: Logic gates review Part 8.3: Adders Part 8.4: Mux/DeMux	8-1. Digital logic gates and nand game 8-2. Arithmetic logic gates 8-3. Recitation	Chapter 5.1 through 5.4 [TECS] Chapter 2	More linked list interview exercises Iris's solution	Assignment 5 due noon 03/22
Week 9 Week of 03/22/2021	Week 9: Combinational Logic Gates to ALU Part 9.1: Selector and Switch Part 9.2: Expanding 2-way 1-bit selector to Multi-way Multi-bit selector Part 9.3: Unary ALU Part 9.4: ALU	9-1. Multi-bit Multi-way Mux 9-2. ALU ALU ALU 9-3. Recitation	[TECS] Chapter 2-3	Mux Application	Assignment 6 due noon 04/05
Week 10 Week of 03/29/2021	Week 10: Sequential logic gates to RAM Part 10.1: Wrap up ALU Part 10.2: Flip-lops, latches and clocks Part 10.3: Registers Part 10.4: Memory Part 10.5: Program Counter	10-1. ALU opcode and intro to latch 10-2. RAM 10-3. Recitation	[TECS] Chapter 3	Mini ALU	Assignment 6 due noon 04/05
Week 11 Week of 04/05/2021	Week 11: Computer Archtecture and machine code Part 11.1: Wrap up RAM Part 11.2: Revisit computer arch Part 11.3: Intro to machine code Part 11.4: Memory hierarchy Part 11.5: Assembly	11-1. Machine code and computer arch_1 11-2. Machine code and computer arch_2 11-3. Recitation	[TECS] Chapter 4	Von neumann model exercise	Assignment 7 due noon 04/12
Week 12 Slides 1 slides 2 Week of 04/12/2021	Week 12: Intro to X86 Part 12.1: CPU controller Part 12.2: Intro to X86 Part 12.3: Function call convention Part 12.4: Condition and jump Part 12.5 Arrays and Structs	12-1. Wrap-up CPU and intro to X86 12-2. X86 assembly_1 12-3. Recitation	Chapter 8	X86 Arithmetic and data movement	assignment 8 is out, due noon 04/26/2021 Bonus assignment 2 is out, due end of the semester
Week 13 Slides 1 slides 2 Week of 04/19/2021	Week 13: X86: Control Flow and Function Convention Part 13.1: Direct and indirect addressing mode Part 13.2: Control flow Part 13.3: Stack Part 13.4: Function Convention and Stack	13-1. X86 Control flow and Array 13-2. X86 Function Conventions	Chapter 8	No recitation	assignment 8 due noon 04/26/2021 Bonus assignment 2 is out, due end of the semester

Hands-out