The University of Western Ontario
London, Canada
Course Description
Computer Architecture is the study of computer design between the levels of electronics and assembly programming (and how it contributes to the goal of performing computations faster). Our main focus is on the CPU, but some time will be spent on external memory and I/O devices as well. This course aims to develop three skills relating to Computer Architecture:Prerequisites, Anti-requisites (if any)
Operating Systems --- Students are expected to have previous experience with some UNIX variation. There is school equipment available if you do not have your own.
Programming Languages --- This course expects previous programming experience in assembly language and Java. Course work will involve programming in Java and may involve some assembly programming as well.
Course Work --- According to the Academic Calendar:
ECE 375 is an anti-requisite.
Students are responsible for ensuring that they meet the prerequisite requirements or have obtained appropriate special permission in the event that they don't meet the formal requirements. Students not meeting the requirements nor having the appropriate permission may be dropped from the course as per Senate regulations.
Instructor
Robert E. Webber
Office: Room 384, Middlesex College
Office Hours: To be announced.
Phone: x86916 (prefer email)
E-Mail: webber@csd.uwo.ca (use 3350 in subject line to get best results from my spam filtering software) [note: confidential information such as marks should not be sent unencrypted; see prof regarding establishing usable encryption keys for exchanging confidential information]
Textbook, Lecture Notes
Course Website
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS350a/index.html and/or http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS350b/index.html and/or they may have already changed CS350 to CS3350 in the link names. Announcements related to the course are made on the course web pages. The assignments and exam are marked under the assumption that students are familiar with the material on the course web pages associated with the current semester.
Lecture Topics
Class Schedule
Lectures: 3 hours (Tuesday 3:30 - 4:30 pm [Physics and Astronomy Building 36], Thursday 3:30 - 5:30 pm [Physics and Astronomy Building 36])
Labs: 0 hours
TA Consulting Hours (to be announced on course announcements page)
Computing Facilities
NOTE: course assignments will require access to the departmental computing facilities for online handin.
Each student will be given an account on the Computer Science Department senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL . In accepting the GAUL account, a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct .
Note: After-hours access to certain Computer Science lab
rooms is by student card. If a student card is lost, a replacement card will no
longer open these lab rooms, and the student must bring the new card to a member of the
Systems Group in Middlesex College Room 346.
Email Contact
We will occasionally need to send email messages to the whole class, or to students individually. Email will be sent to your ITS email address (depending on which one comes with the class list). You must make sure that you read your email on ITS on a frequent and regular basis, or have it forwarded to an alternative email address if you prefer to read it there.
However, you should note that email at ITS (your UWO account)
and other email providers such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com may have quotas or limits on
the amount of space they can use. If you let your email accumulate there, your mailbox may
fill up and you may lose important email from your instructors. Losing email that
you have forwarded to an alternative email address is not an excuse for not knowing about
the information that was sent.
Student Evaluation
Note: the focus of the assignments is to produce the most efficient answers to the given tasks, thus assignments that pass all the test data will be given different marks depending on how efficient they are. Assignments that don't pass all the test data will get marks worse that all the assignments that do pass all the test data. These nonworking assignments will be judged on their intended efficiency and quality of the of the accompanying report.
The work can be done in groups of no larger than 3 people. When working in groups, each student individually must hand in the assignment. Working in groups and not declaring the group would be fraudulent behaviour and handled as an academic offense. The work handed in is assumed to be your individual work unless you list under your name on the title page the other members of your group. For more details on required formats and hand in policies, see the assignment spec.
The assignments are due to be handed in online by midnight (end of day) on the designated Monday. The late penalty is .85 raised to the number of days late on the weight of the assignment, i.e.,
If for any reason an assignment, quiz, or midterm is cancelled, the percentage of the course mark associated with that task will be added to the portion associated with the final exam.
As usual, assignments and exams will be marked and returned as soon as convenient. As usual, final exam and final course marks will not be made available until the department posts the final course marks or the registrar's office makes marks available.
Exam / Essay / Test / Quiz Schedule
[NOTE: assignment due dates are tentative pending departmental approval. If they are changed, there will be an announcement on the course announcements page.]As per the Academic Calendar, students missing a final exam should report this irregularity `immediately' to their Dean's office. In this course, students seeking a makeup final exam are further required to report that this is the case to their professor via email within 3 days (72 hours) of the occurrence of the exam. [Students in a coma for more than 3 days or with similar excuses should seek an exemption through the Dean's office.] The message must also include the name of the person at the Dean's office who is handling the case. Also, the message must include a list of all other exams the student is currently scheduled to take. Students are expected to promptly make available to the Dean's office whatever evidence they require to judge the situation and be ready to take the makeup exam if the Dean's office approves it.
Although the material covered on the makeup final exam will be the same as the regular final exam, university regulations do not require that the format be the same. Since the number of people taking the makeup will be fewer, it is much more likely that the makeup will be heavily weighted toward essay-style questions, if the original final exam was a written exam. Note that university regulations do require taking proficiency in English into account when assigning grades.
Assignment Schedule
Ethical Conduct
All assignments are individual assignments in that each student is individually responsible for handing in their assignment. Students may work in groups on assignments, see discussion under Student Evaluation for more details.
Assignments will be marked on both content and style. Assignments that are judged to be the result of academic dishonesty will, for the student's first offence, be given a mark of zero with an additional penalty equal to the weight of the assignment also being applied. You are responsible for reading and respecting the Computer Science Department's policy on Scholastic Offences and Rules of Ethical Conduct.
For additional departmental policies or procedural wording that I may have overlooked, see http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~aija/COTemplate.htm as well as http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~aija/policies.html. If there is a contradiction between this document and the policies indicated above, please let the instructor know by email soonest.
Academic Accommodation for Medical
Illness
Note: for assignments cummulatively counting less than 5% of your mark, you can ask the prof what ad hoc relieve he would offer. If you are unsatisfied with that or for situations larger than 5%, use the following official university procedure: