Schedule for CSC 252, Spring 2008 (Tentative)

The following schedule is subject to change, so please check back frequently. Slides for the individual lectures were derived in part from those by the course text authors: Dave O'Hallaron and Randy Bryant. The slides are intended for the sole purpose of instruction of computer organization at the University of Rochester.


Unit Topics Reading Assignments

Overview
     Thur. Jan. 16 Introduction Chapter 1 Get an account and set it up
Data representation
     Tues. Jan. 22 Overview Chapter 2 A1: bit twiddling
     Thur. Jan. 24 Integers A1 trivia due, noon
     Tues. Jan. 29 Floating Point A1 due midnight Jan 30
Assembly-level programs
     Thur. Jan. 31 overview and addressing modes Chapter 3 (skip 3.14-3.15) A1 due midnight yesterday;
A2: the binary bomb
     Tues. Feb. 05 control flow A2 trivia due, noon Wednesday Feb 6
     Thur. Feb. 07 subroutines
     Tues. Feb. 12 & Thurs. Feb 14 structured data A2 due midnight Feb 14;
A3: the buffer bomb
Processor architecture
     Tues. Feb. 19 ISA design issues; combinational, memory elements, and clocks; single-cycle implementation Chapter 4 (RISC vs. CISC), Section 4.1-4.3 A3 trivia due, midnight
     Thurs. Feb. 21 sequential implementation revisited; pipelined implementation Figures 4.20 and 4.21;
Section 4.3.5
     Tues. Feb. 26 pipelining continued Figures 4.30, 4.31, 4.39, 4.52;
Sections 4.4, 4.5.3–4.5.7
A3 due midnight
     Thurs. Feb. 28 pipelining wrap-up, modern processors (see previous slides) Sections 4.5.11, 4.6, 5.7 A4: Processor design
Optimizing performance
     Tues. Mar. 04 the key performance formula;
obstacles to compiling fast code
Guest lecture by Professor Chen Ding
Reading
     Thur. Mar. 06 measuring performance A4 due by noon on Friday

      Mar. 11 & 13 UR spring break

     Tues. Mar. 18 Midterm Exam held in Lander Auditorium
     Thurs. Mar. 20 Machine-independent compiler optimizations A5: Tuning performance


The storage hierarchy
     Tues. Mar. 25 storage technology Chapter 6
     Thur. Mar. 27 caching A5 trivia due, noon
     Tues. Apr. 1 performance tuning A5 due midnight, Thursday 3rd April
Exceptional control flow
     Thur. Apr. 3 exceptions Chapter 8 A6: Unix shell
     Tues. Apr. 08 processes, linking, signals skim Chapter 7
Virtual memory
     Thur. Apr. 10 Non-local jumps, Address translation Chapter 10 A6 trivia due, noon
     Tues. Apr. 15 Pentium/Linux case study
     Thur. Apr. 17 Storage management A6 due midnight
A7: memory allocation
Concurrency
     Tues. Apr. 22 Guest lecture by Professor Michael L. Scott
Threads and Semaphores
Chapter 13
     Thur. Apr. 24 Cache coherence
     Tues. Apr. 29 Wrap-up A7 due 11:59pm Wednesday

     Sat. May 10 Final Exam 8:30am, Goergen 101