COSC 37---Representative Syllabus



Project

    The instructor believes that the best way to learn about systems
    is to build them: to connect the basic building blocks with the
    high-level behavior, informed throughout by the basic design
    principles.
    
    In "Computer Architecture," students do that by using the
    LogicWorks simulator to build a complete CPU.  At the end of the
    term, they compile C code and run it on their CPUs.
    

Lectures

    Course Introduction; Electricity to Gates

    Binary; Basic Combinatorial Logic

    Trickier Combinatorial Logic

    Reality Check: Logic Design

    Storage Elements

    Clocks

    I Like Traffic Lights

    ROM was built in a day

    You're Either on the Bus or Off the Bus

    Computer Architecture

    The ISA

    The ISA (part 2)

    Assembly Language; Reality Check

    I/O

    Traps and Subroutines

    Reality Check: What's on a Motherboard

    The Stack (p1)

    The Stack (p2)

    High-Level Languages

    Data, Operations, and Variables

    Control Flow and Stack Frames

    Functions and Stack Frames

    Recursion and Data Structures

    Microarchitecture

    Microarchitecture of the LC-3...

    Architecture in the Real World

    The Microcode Approach

    Dirty Tricks, p1

    Dirty Tricks, p2

    Dirty Tricks, p3

    The Future: Multicore and Multiprocessing

    Virtualization, Security

    Course Wrap-up