ECE 3056A: Architecture, Concurrency, and Energy

Spring 2013

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Course Objective

This course introduces the basic organizational principles of the major components of a processor - the core, memory hierarchy, and the I/O subsystem. Students gain an understanding of the sources of the performance and energy dissipation in modern processors and learn the multiple forms and levels of parallelism that have been employed to sustain performance in the industry. Assignments using architecture level simulators enable the students to explore the operation and tradeoffs in performance and energy and reinforce the concepts learned in the class room.

Prerequisite: ECE2035, ECE2031

Text book: Patterson and Hennessey, Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software Interface (4th edition, revised printing).

Course Syllabus: syllabus

Course Grading

The course grade will be assigned in the following manner:

30% Lab Assignments and Homeworks
15% Midterm 1
20% Midterm 2
30% Final Exam
5% Pop quiz, class participation
Homework and programming assignments
I encourage you to study in groups. However, homeworks, examinations and your work on all programming assignments must be your own individual work. The paper survey and a research project can be a group project. Collaboration with other students or other persons is prohibited. Submitting any work other than your own is a violating of the Academic Honor Code. If you are not sure what you can discuss or not, please contact the instructor.
Exams
Absolutely no collaboration at all. Copying or receiving any other information from another person or their exam, with or without their consent, is unethical and unacceptable. Cheating is a direct violation of the GT Academic Honor Code and will be dealt with accordingly.
Homework late policy: All homeworks/assignments are due on the day specified by the problem set and posted online.
Assignment submission rules: You must follow the submission guidelines specified in the assignment description. We will use T-square. Wrong file names, broken file formats, missing files will lose 20% of grade. For reports, you must turn in a hardcopy of your report during the class time.
Regrades: If a test is submitted for a re-grade, I have the right to re-grade the entire test, so keep it mind that it is possible to lose additional points. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you do not ask for a re-grade unless you have substantial reason to believe that I made a mistake when originally grading the test.
Class participation We do not check attendance. You will get class participation points if (1) you ask many good questions during the class (2) you answer actively in on-line group discussions (3) other creative ways.
No computers/tablets/cellphones may be open/active during lecture. Use a notebook to take notes.

Office Hours: Please respect the office hours of the instructor by planning ahead. Other times are possible by appointments.
Student honor code: Zero tolerance toward a violation of the student honor code. Any misbehavior will be reported to Dean of Students directly.