Course Description
The goal of the course is to give students an understanding of modern computer architecture, with particular attention on how the underlying hardware of a computer system influences issues relating to application performance. To accomplish this, we will study the following topics:

• Anstraction of machine structures
• Performance metrics and profiling tools
• Hierarchical memory
• MIPS instruction set architecture and SPIM assembler and simulator
• Introduction to logic circuit design
• MIPS single cycle and multiple cycle CPU datapath and control
• Instruction level parallelism
• Multicore architecture and thread level parallelism
• GPU architecture

Prerequisite: CS2208, CS2210, CS2211, and either CS2209 or CS2101.

Antirequisites: ECE 3375A/B

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays 4:30pm - 5:30pm and Thursdays 3:30pm - 5:30pm at MC105B

Instructor: Marc Moreno Maza
Office: Middlesex College 327
Office Hours: Tuesdays 2:30pm - 4:30pm; Thursdays 1:30pm - 3:30pm
Email: moreno@csd.uwo.ca
Phone: 661-2111 x

Teaching Assistant:
Xiaohui Chen, Ning Xie
Office: Middlesex College 327
Email: xchen422, nxie6 <at> csd <dot> uwo <dot> ca

Lecture Notes
Course lecture notes will be made available in PDF on the course website. They are provided as a courtesy by the course instructor. Possessing (and even reading) these notes is not a suitable substitute for attending lectures.

Course Website
Lecture notes, assignments, and class information will be posted on the course web site. You are responsible for reading this information on a frequent and regular basis.

TA Consulting Schedule:
Wednesday 1:30pm - 3:30pm and Friday 1:30pm - 3:30pm

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.

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, or to the I/O counter (MC 352).

Email Contact

We will occasionally need to send email messages to the whole class, or to students individually. Email will be sent to your UWO email address. You must make sure that you read your email on a frequent and regular basis, or have it forwarded to an alternative email address if you prefer to read it there.

Note that UWO and most other email providers establish quotas or limits on the amount of space available to you. If you let your email accumulate, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important email from your instructors. Losing email is not an acceptable excuse for not knowing about the information that was sent.

Students can ask questions via email, however if there are any large, somewhat complicated issues, it is recommended to discuss them during office hours. Moreover, you MUST use your UWO account or your GAUL account in order to write to the instructor. (Emails from non-academic accounts will be automatically ignored.) In addition, you must include "CS3350" in the subject line.

Student Evaluation

Grades will be based on four homework assignments worth a total of 40%, four in-class quizzes worth a total of 20%, and a final exam worth 40%.

If for any reason the assignment schedule given below cannot be adhered to, the homework and quiz marks will be prorated. (The assignments are worth 40% of the overall mark for the course. If an assignment has to be cancelled for any reason, the remaining assignment weights will be prorated (scaled) to add up to 40%.)

To be eligible to receive a passing grade in the course, your mark on the final exam must be at least 40%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 40%. To be eligible to receive a grade of C or higher, your mark on the final exam must be at least 50%, and your weighted average on the assignments must be at least 50%.

Assignment and Test Feedback
Every effort will be made to have homework assignments and quizzes marked and handed back within 2 weeks of the hand-in date. If we are unable to comply with our intended return dates, revised dates will be posted on the course website.

Quizzes and Exams

Quizzes (to test understanding of key concepts, 30-minute in-class):
Quiz 1 (CPU/memory performance metrics and hierarchical memory), beginning of class on Thursday, Jan. 22nd
Quiz 2 (MIPS and logic circuits), Thursday, Feb. 26th
Quiz 3 (ILP), Thursday, March 12th
Quiz 4 (multicore and TLP), Thursday, April 2nd

Final exam: 3 hours during the April exam period; exact time to be announced

Assignments Due Dates (tentative)

Assignment 1 (memory hierarchy), due on Friday, Jan. 23rd
Assignment 2 (MIPS and circuits), due on Friday, Feb. 27th
Assignment 3 (ILP), due on Friday, March 20th
Assignment 4 (Multicore and TLP), due on Monday, April 6th

About the Assignments

• Assignment descriptions will be posted on the course website one week before the due date.
• Any changes, updates, and clarifications to assignments will also be posted on the website. It is your responsibility to monitor these pages closely.

• With each assignment, you are required to hand in an Assignment Submission Form, on which you certify that the material you've handed in is exclusively your own work. This form must be submitted to the assignment locker in a 9-by-12-inch envelope, bearing your name, which will be used to return your assignment. The precise location of the assignment lockers will be announced on the course website.
• Assignments are due by 11:59 pm on the due date. In the case of programming assignments, the time stamp on the electronic submission will be used to determine any late penalty. For assignments requiring paper submissions, the times at which they are removed from the assignment locker will be used.

• Late assignments will be accepted for up to four days after the due date, with weekends (Saturday and Sunday) counting as a single day; the late penalty is 5% of the available marks per day. Lateness is based on the times the assignment is removed from the locker and/or received electronically, not on the time it was printed or last modified.
• Late Coupons
  • Each student is given 2 late coupons. These are virtual (as opposed to physical) coupons maintained by the instructor. Late coupons may be applied toward any of assignments 1 through 2.
  • Each coupon can be thought of as a potential one-day assignment extension. It's entirely up to you to decide when to use your coupons; more than one coupon may be used per assignment. If you wish to use any coupons with an assignment, simply note that fact on your Assignment Submission Form.
  • The intent of late coupons is to give you some free days in case of minor illness, work overload, etc. No other extensions will be given in such cases.
  • Coupons are not transferable to another student.
  • Once a coupon has been used, you cannot ``take it back'' to use for another assignment instead.
  • Unused coupons are not redeemable for extra marks.
  • Using a late coupon does not change the final date on which an assignment will be accepted. Whether or not coupons are used, the assignment must be handed in within 4 days of the original due date.

• Extensions will be granted only on serious medical or compassionate grounds. You should take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor.

• Assignments are marked by the Teaching Assistant(s), who follow marking schemes provided by instructors.
• When assignment marking has been completed, you will be informed via the course website and/or email.
• You will be able to pick up your graded assignments in the first class following the announcement of their availability. You must present your student card when retrieving assignments.
• A request for adjustment in an assignment mark must be made within 2 weeks of the date on which it was first available for pickup. (Beyond that date, regrading will not be considered, regardless of whether you retrieved your assignment.) Such a request must be submitted in writing, and must include specific reasons why you believe you deserve more marks. The request must be accompanied by all materials that were originally handed in, as well as the original marker's grade summary sheet. Regrading requests must be handed in to the lecturer.
• Assignment marks may be mailed out periodically throughout the term. It is your responsibility to check that your marks have been recorded correctly.

Tutoring

The role of tutoring is to help students understand course material. Tutors should not write assignments or tests for the students who hire them. Submitting an assignment that contains material written by a tutor is an academic offense. 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.

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. All students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to Mental Health@Western. for a complete list of options about how to obtain help. For further information please see http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/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 at https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/medical_document.pdf.

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.

Ethical Conduct
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. 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 Rules of Ethical Conduct and Scholastic Offenses.