Computer Science @ UC Davis | Course Descriptions

ECS 154B COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE (4) I, II, III

Lecture: 3 hours

Discussion: 1 hour

Prerequisites: Course ECS 154A or EEC 170, and course ECS 110/60

Grading: Letter; two midterms (20% each), final exam (40%) and programming and digital design work (20%)

Catalog Description:
Hardwired and microprogrammed CPU design. Memory hierarchies. Uniprocessor performance analysis under varying program mixes. Introduction to pipelining and multiprocessors.

Expanded Course Description:

Hardwired and Microprogrammed CPU Design
Internal bus systems. Register transfer languages. Microprogramming. Homework using digital design software to implement part or all of a simple CPU.
Memory Hierarchies
General idea of multilevel memory systems. Emphasis here is on caches, since virtual memory is covered in courses 154A, 150, 151AB.
Uniprocessor Performance Analysis
Instruction set profile analyses under varying program mixes. Cost/performance tradeoffs. Introduction to RISC philosophy, and interactions with pipelining, orthogonal instruction sets, etc.
Multiprocessor Speedup
Introduction to shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessor systems.

Textbooks:
D. Patterson and J. Hennessy, Computer Organization and Design the Hardware/Software Interface, Elsevier HSS, 2004

Computer Usage:
Extensive digital design simulation assignments.

Engineering Design Statement:
Design tradeoffs--hardwired vs. microprogrammed CPU implementation, RISC vs CISC architectural philosophy, and so on--form a continuing theme in the course.

ABET Category Content:
Engineering Science: 2 units
Engineering Design: 2 units

Program Outcomes:
Students will:

learn the foundational concepts of microprocessor organization
accomplish a sequence of integrated projects which create the low-level software and digital design of a fully-functional, pipeline microprocessor
work with state-of-art commercial CAD tools to solve design problems

Program Outcomes:

The ability to apply knowledge of basic science, mathematics and engineering principles to solve computing and information processing problems
The ability to understand the relationship between hardware and software
The ability to understand the tradeoffs in the design of hardware systems, software systems, processes and components

Instructors: M. Farrens, N. Matloff

Prepared by: M. Farrens, N. Matloff, R. Olsson (Nov. 1996)

Overlap Statement:
This course does not duplicate any existing course.

5/06