Course Overview Page 1

Computer Organization Computer Organization and Architecture (AT70.01)and Architecture (AT70.01)Comp. Sc. and Inf. Mgmt.Comp. Sc. and Inf. Mgmt.Asian Institute of TechnologyAsian Institute of Technology

Course OverviewPage 1

Instructor: Dr. Sumanta Guha Office: 104 CSIM Building Email: [email protected] Telephone: 66-2-524-5714 (ext. 5714 at AIT, Bkk)

TA: Mr. Nguyen Duc Cong Song Email: [email protected]

Credits: 3(3-0)

Prerequisite: None

Course Website: http://www.cs.ait.ac.th/~guha/COA/ All material from the instructor – including these slides – are

on-line!


Class times: Tuesday & Thursday 16:00-17:15

Discussion Group: Yahoo group – ait_csim_coa ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ait_csim_coa/ )

Submit your email address to the TA and you will be invited to join the group.

Important: All course-related questions outside of class or office should not be sent by individual email to the TA or instructor – they should be posted to the discussion group!! Responses may be made by students as well. The TA and instructor will constantly monitor the group and participate in discussions and try to answer questions. This way everybody benefits.

Announcements by the TA and instructor will be posted to the group. Please check the group frequently and please participate in discussions !!


Textbook (required): D.A. Patterson and J.L. Hennessy (1998) – Computer Organization and Design : The Hardware/Software Interface (2nd edition), Morgan Kaufmann

Please buy an original copy of the COD text (at the AIT bookstore if you are in Bangkok) as there are several figures where colors are used to highlight active components and it is difficult to follow without color!

Brief Course Outline (note the course description at the CSIM Courses Offered website is outdated):

Chapters 1-7 of the COD text Advanced topics (to be announced) SPIM – MIPS assembly language simulator Verilog – hardware description language


Objectives: We plan to understand the principles underlying modern computer architecture and how and why components are designed the way they are.

The keyword is understand !! We must not be satisfied by just learning a bunch of information about how computers are made – our goal is to learn why manufacturers chose particular designs and what makes them good.

Note: computer architecture is an (interesting and beautiful) science. Just like physics or math. Therefore, once we understand the reasoning behind design decisions it will be easy to follow the designs themselves. Then there will not be a lot to memorize !!

This will be a practical course !! We shall use the SPIM simulator to learn MIPS assembly. We shall design fully-functional components and computers using the Verilog design environment. Remember:

Assembly is the language of the machine. It is a direct function of the hardware. Definition of assembly determines design of the hardware and vice versa. Therefore, it is critical to understand assembly well.

Verilog is widely used in industry to design and verify chips before physical manufacture. Thus, we shall use computers to design totally realistic parts like CPUs and memory, run and test them, and join them together into systems!!


Reference Books: M.G. Arnold (1999) – Verilog Digital Computer Design, Prentice Hall J.D. Carpinelli (2000) – Computer Systems Organization & Architecture,

Addison Wesley J. L. Hennessy and D.A. Patterson (2003) – Computer Architecture : A

Quantitative Approach (3rd Edition), Morgan Kaufmann I. Koren (2002) – Computer Arithmetic Algorithms, Prentice Hall M.M. Mano (2002) – Computer System Architecture (3rd Edition), Prentice

Hall M.M. Mano (2002) – Digital Design (3rd Edition), Prentice Hall S. Palnitkar (2003) – Verilog HDL (2nd Edition), Prentice Hall A.S. Tanenbaum (1998) – Structured Computer Organization (4th Edition),

Prentice Hall R. Williams (2001) – Computer Systems Architecture: A Networking

Approach, Addison Wesley


Grading System: Mid-term – 20% Final – 40% Projects – 40%

Projects will be on using the MIPS simulator SPIM (1 project) and the hardware design language Verilog (2 projects).

Projects will be done by groups of students, each group having 1-2 students.

More details will be provided as we go along. Monitor the discussion group for announcements!

Enjoy the Course! Be enthusiastic about the material because it is interesting

and important. Our job is to help you learn and enjoy the experience. We will do our best but we also need your help. So let’s all have fun together with computer architecture…!!!

Course Overview Page 1

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