The University of Western Ontario
London, Canada

Department of Computer Science

CS 2208a -- Fundamentals of Computer Organization

Course Outline – Fall Term 2010

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to give students an understanding of computer organization: the internal structure and operation of a digital computer at the level of memory, registers, flow of control, and assembly language. At the end of this course, the student will be able to answer the question: "How does a computer execute my program?" This course has a theoretical and a practical component: computer organization will be studied at a theoretical level, and students will have the opportunity to practice their skills by studying the assembly language for a particular Reduced Instruction Set Computer.

Prerequisites

· Computer Science 1027a/b, with a mark of at least 60 %

· Unless you have either the prerequisites for this course or written special permission from your Dean to enroll in it, you will be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.

· Students are assumed to be familiar with a high-level programming language, and with data structures such as stacks and queues.

Instructor : Aija Downing

· Office: Middlesex College 416

· Office Hours: to be announced

· Phone: 519 661-2111 ext. 86862

· E-Mail: aija<at>csd.uwo.ca

Text

· Recommended Textbook:  Paul, Richard P.   SPARC Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, & C.  Prentice Hall, Second Edition, 2000

· There is one copy of the text available at the Taylor Library on 1-day reserve.

Course Website

The course website is located at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS2208a. Lecture notes, assignments, labs, and other class information will be posted at this site. You are responsible for checking the course website on a frequent and regular basis.

Lecture Topics

• Introduction to Computer Organization
• Binary Numbers
• Assembly Language
• Binary Arithmetic: Multiplication
• Subprograms
• Memory Storage
• Data Structures
• Assembly, Linking and Loading
• Floating Point Numbers
• Java Virtual Machine
•  Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC)
• Alternative Architectures: Intel

Lecture / Lab Schedule: see online timetable at https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/Timetables/mastertt/ttindex.cfm

Lectures: 3 hours per week

Copies of lecture overheads will be available on the course website well before each lecture, so that you can bring them to class and fill them in as the lecture progresses. You are advised that these are copies of the instructor's overheads and are intended to aid in note-taking during lectures; they are not complete course notes and are not a substitute for attending lectures.

Labs: 1 hour per week

The purpose of the Labs is to discuss the assignments and some of the practical material, in a small tutorial environment. The Teaching Assistants (TA's) will present course material which is relevant to the assignments, help students understand assignment specifications, and answer questions related to the assignments. Marked assignments will be handed back in Labs. You are expected to attend all Labs.

TA Consulting Hours will be announced on the course website.

Computing Facilities

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 . An introduction to the GAUL environment will be provided in the first Lab.

Email contact

We occasionally need to send email messages to the class or to students individually. Email is sent to your UWO email address as assigned to you by Information Technology Services (ITS).  It is your responsibility to read this email on a frequent and regular basis. You may wish to have this email forwarded to an alternative email address; see the ITS website for directions on forwarding email. 

You should note that email at ITS and other email providers may have quotas or limits on the amount of space they dedicate to each account. Unchecked email may accumulate beyond those limits and you may be unable to retrieve important messages from your instructors.  Losing email is not an acceptable excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.

You are encouraged to contact the course instructor via email, with brief, email appropriate questions regarding lecture material or clarification of assignments. However, please first check the course website for answers to frequently asked questions, or to see if the information is already there. Note:  You must send email from your UWO account, or include "CS2208" in the subject line. Other email will be filtered out. Please send email in plaintext format.

Student Evaluation

Component	Weight	Schedule (tentative)	Workload
Asn 1 (practical and concept)	5 %	Due Friday Oct. 1 (by 5 p.m. in the locker)	light
Asn 2 (programming)	5 %	Due Friday Oct. 15 (midnight)	medium-light
Asn 3 (programming)	7 %	Due Friday Oct. 29 (midnight)	medium
Asn 4 (programming)	8 %	Due Friday Nov. 19 (midnight)	heavy
Asn 5 (programming)	10 %	Due Wed. Dec. 8 (midnight)	heavy
Midterm Exam	25 %	Wed. Nov. 3, 11:30 – 1:15 (class time)
Final Exam	40 %	3 hours, during the December exam period

If for any reason the assignment schedule given above cannot be adhered to, the assignment marks will be pro-rated. (The 5 assignments are worth 35 % of the overall mark for the course. If an assignment has to be cancelled for any reason, the remaining assignment weights will be prorated to add up to 35 %. )

There will be no makeup Midterm Exam, except for students requesting a Special Midterm Exam for religious reasons. These students must have notified the course instructor and filed documentation with their Dean's office at least 2 weeks prior to the Midterm Exam.

If you miss the Midterm Exam for any other reason, follow the procedure for Academic Accommodation for Medical Illness given below. If accommodation is approved by your Dean’s office, your Final Exam mark will be reweighted to include the weight of the Midterm Exam.

To be eligible to obtain a passing mark in the course, the weighted average of the midterm and final exam marks must be at least 50 % and the weighted average of the assignment marks must be at least 45 %. To be eligible to achieve a final mark of 60 or higher in the course (i.e. to be eligible for Honours Programs), the final exam mark must be at least 50% and the weighted average of the assignment marks must be at least 50 %.
Note that weighted average = (total of weighted marks / sum of weights) and  weighted mark = (weight * mark)

Academic Accommodation for Medical Illness

If you are unable to meet a course requirement due to illness or other serious circumstances, you must provide valid medical or other supporting documentation to your Dean's office as soon as possible and contact your instructor immediately. It is the student's responsibility to make alternative arrangements with their instructor once the accommodation has been approved and the instructor has been informed. In the event of a missed final exam, a "Recommendation of Special Examination" form must be obtained from the Dean's Office immediately. For further information please see: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/accommodation_medical.pdf

A student requiring academic accommodation due to illness should use the Student Medical Certificate when visiting an off-campus medical facility or request a Record's Release Form (located in the Dean's Office) for visits to Student Health Services. The form can be found here: https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/medical_document.pdf

Assignment Policies

Submission of Assignments

• Assignment 1 is due in the CS2208 locker by 5 p.m. on the due date.
• Assignments 2 to 5 are due by midnight (24:00) on the due date. The online submission must be made by midnight; however, the paper copy may be put in the locker by 5 p.m. of the day following your online submission.
• The procedures to be followed for programming assignment submission are posted on the course website. Note that there is both a paper submission and an electronic submission.
• The online submission and the paper submission must be the same. The paper copy of the assignment submission is the one that will be marked. The purpose of the electronic submission is to determine the handin time, to allow the marker to try running the program if necessary, and to allow checking of all assignments for similarity.
  
  

Late Assignments

• A late assignment will have a penalty of 10% of the maximum mark for the assignment deducted for each day (24 hours from the due time) that the assignment is late.
• Saturday/Sunday count as one day for the purpose of assessing the late penalty.
• An assignment that is more than two days late will not be accepted (even if late coupons are used! They merely reduce the late penalty; they do not give an extension.)
• No extensions will be given for assignments. Use late coupons (described below) in cases of minor illness, work overload, home computer problems, etc. However, in the event of serious medical or compassionate grounds, you should follow the procedure for Academic Accommodation for Medical Illness as given above.

Late Coupons

• The intent of the late coupons is to give you some “free” days in case of minor illness, work overload, etc.
• Coupons do not extend the maximum number of days late; their purpose is to reduce the late penalty only, not to give an extension.
• Each student will have the equivalent of four ``late coupons'', which may be used for any of the assignments. Each coupon is equivalent to one day free of a late penalty; it is entirely up to you to choose which assignment(s) the coupons will be used for, and more than one coupon may be used per assignment.
• The coupons are "virtual", and you must indicate the number of late coupons you wish to use for a particular assignment on its  Assignment Submission Form.  Handwritten notes or email messages will not be accepted.
• The number of coupons used will be recorded; however, it is your responsibility to keep track of how many late coupons you have used. Writing “all the late coupons I have left'' for the number of late coupons will be interpreted as “0 coupons ”.
• Rules for late coupons:
• Coupons are not transferable to another student.
• Once a coupon is handed in for a particular assignment, it cannot be taken back to be used for another assignment.
• Coupons cannot be redeemed retroactively (i.e. once an assignment is marked, a coupon can not later be used to reduce the late penalty).
• Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks.

Assignment Backups

· It is your responsibility to keep up-to-date backups of assignment disk files in case of system crashes or inadvertently erased files. Keep disk copies of all material handed in, as well as the actual graded assignment, to guard against the possibility of lost assignments or errors in recording marks.

Assignment Marking

• The TA's will mark the paper copy of the assignment submission.
• Assignments will be marked by the TA's and handed back in the Lab hour. You are responsible for picking up your assignment from your TA within the 2 weeks following the Lab in which that assignment was first handed back. Any assignments not picked up within those 2 weeks will be discarded, and the marks will be considered final.
• You should direct any questions about marking in the first instance to your TA, and then to the course instructor if the discussion with the TA is not satisfactory.
• A request for an adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks following the Lab in which the assignment was first handed back.  All assignment marks are considered to be final after that date, even if you did not pick up the assignment.
• The marks for all assignments will be posted by the end of the term; it is your responsibility to ensure that the marks posted are correct.

Programming Assignment Marking Schemes

• A programming assignment is considered to be ``working'' if it is shown to satisfy all the requirements specified in the assignment description, including correct results.
• Note that a programming assignment is an exercise meant to give you practice in certain concepts. Therefore, a program that produces the correct output is not necessarily a ``working'' program; it must also satisfy the specifications given in the assignment description.
• Other criteria in terms of which an assignment will be evaluated include coding style, comments, and efficiency.

Exam Policies

• Both exams are closed book; however, you will be given a sheet that includes the SPARC instruction set and some other useful information for reference during the exam. This reference sheet will be turned back in with the exam. (The contents of the reference sheet will be made available on the course website before the exam.) 
• No calculators are allowed.
• For computer-marked multiple-choice exams, use may be made of software to check for unusual coincidences in answer patterns that may indicate cheating.

Accessibility Statement

Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you. You may also wish to contact Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 661-2111 x 82147 for any specific question regarding an accommodation.

Tutoring

The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write part or all of an assignment for the students who hire them. Having employed the same tutor as another student is not a legitimate defense against an accusation of collusion, should two students hand in assignments judged similar beyond the possibility of coincidence.

Ethical Conduct

Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf.

All assignments are individual assignments. You may discuss approaches to problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work (assignment coding, answers to concept questions, etc.) must be your individual effort.

Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy in the Western Academic Calendar).

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 .

The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking. Students will be required to submit their programs in electronic form for plagiarism checking.