Course Syllabus
Department of Computer Science
The George Washington University
Csci 6461.10 - Computer System Architecture

General Course Information
Meeting time:
Classroom:
Class Webpage:
Credits: 		6:10PM -- 8:40PM, Wednesday
MPA B07
Class Webpage
3
Instructor Information
Name:
Office:
Tel:
fax:
Email:
Office hours: 		Xiuzhen Cheng
Academic Center, Room 716
202 994 9751
202 994 4875
cheng AT gwu.edu
2:00PM-4:00PM on Monday, and 12:00PM-2:00PM on Wednesday.
TA Information
Name:
Office:
Tel:
Email:
Office hours: 		Hongjuan Li
Academic Center, Room 725

hongjuanli86 AT gmail.com
4:00PM-6:00PM, Wednesday and Friday.
Course Description and Objective
This is a graduate level course on Computer and Processor Architectures. It will examine modern processor design, including out-of-order superscalars, advanced branch prediction, advanced memory system, and selected topics on multicore and recent emerging modern process design technologies.

Objective: Introducting to the students the main topics in computer architecture that addresses various aspects of concurrent computations and helping them understand architectural differences relative to a computer system's overall performance and capabilities/limitations in adapting to different applications.

Textbooks
"Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", 5th Edition, by David Patterson and John Hennessy, Morgan Kauffman.   --- Required

"Computer Organization and Design: The hardware/software interface", 4th Ed., by J. Hennessy and D. Patterson, Morgan Kauffman.   --- Recommended Reference

Prerequisites
Programming and Data structures, Discrete Math, and a basic knowledge of Computer organization.
Method of Instruction
The course will be taught mainly through lectures and in-class discussion. You are required to actively participate the in-class discussion!

There will be five homework assignments, all will be counted.

We will have two midterms. The exams will be close-book.

All the homework assignments must be done individually. For each day your assignment is late, 10% will be deducted from your score; assignments will NOT be accepted after one week.

Method of Evaluation
Grades will be computed based on the following weights:
       Homework assignments 30%
       Midterm I 35%
       Midterm II 35%

Final letter grade will be curved based on the distribution of the overall scores. However, you may expect the following tentative grading scale to evaluate your performance: A's,A-'s:90-100%, B+'s,B's,B-'s:80-89%, C+'s,C's,C-'s:70-79%, D+'s,D's,D-'s:60-69%.

If you have questions regarding the grading of your homeworks or exams, you MUST come to see either the instructor or the TA WITHIN ONE WEEK after the date your homeworks or exams have been returned to you.

Make-up policy:
Do not miss exams - there is no make-up policy. However, if for some unavoidable and valid (in the judgment of the instructor) reasons you have to miss an exam, speak with me before the exam.

Course Outline
       Topics Chapter in Text
       Fundamentals of Computer Design Chapter 1
       Organization and Pipeline Review Appendix A, B and C
       Memory Hierarchy Design Chapter 2
       Instruction-Level Parallelism and Its Exploitation Chapter 3
       Data-Level parallelism Chapter 4
       Multiprocessors and Thread-Level Parallelism Chapter 5
       Request-Level and Data-Level Parallelism Chapter 6
Academic Integrity Policy
All examinations and other graded work products and assignments are to be completed in accordance with GW Code of Academic Integrity.