The University of Western Ontario
London, Canada

Department of Computer Science

Computer Science 3350B
Computer Architecture
Course Outline - January 2017

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:

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

Antirequisites: ECE 3375A/B

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays 4:30pm - 5:30pm in MC105B and Thursdays 3:30pm - 5:30pm in SSC 2050

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:
Davood Mohajerani, Egor Chesakov
Office: Middlesex College 327
Email: dmohajer, echesako <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:
Monday 3:30pm - 4:30pm and Wednesday 1:30pm - 2:30pm in Middlesex College MC 4A

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. 26
Quiz 2 (MIPS and logic circuits), Thursday, Feb. 16
Quiz 3 (ILP), Thursday, March 9
Quiz 4 (multicore and TLP), Thursday, March 30

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. 27
Assignment 2 (MIPS and circuits), due on Friday, Feb. 17
Assignment 3 (ILP), due on Friday, March 10
Assignment 4 (Multicore and TLP), due on Friday, March 31.

About the Assignments

Submission of Assignments Late Assignment Policy Assignment Marking 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. Retain 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. It is not safe to discard these materials until you are satisfied that your final mark for the course has been computed properly.

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.