~~NOTOC~~
====== EECS 2021 Computer Organization  ======

===== Course Outline  =====

This course provides a description of how computers work by following the abstraction trail from the high-level programming layer down to the digital-logic component layer. By understanding how the features of each abstraction layer are implemented in the one beneath it, one can grasp the tapestry of the software/hardware interface.
Topics include programming in assembly language, machine instructions and their encoding formats, translating and loading high-level programs, computer organization and performance issues, CPU structure, single/multi-cycle datapath and control, pipelining, and memory hierarchy. The course presents theoretical concepts as well as concrete implementations on a modern RISC processor.
The lab sessions (3 hours/week) involve experiments on assembly and machine language, hardware description languages and simulators, processor architectures, cache memories.

===== Course Learning Outcomes =====

By the end of the course, the students will be expected to be able to:

  - Translate high-level code to assembly language and machine code
  - Represent data in machine readable form and describe how it is stored and manipulated in a CPU
  - Synthesize hardware of increasing complexity from logic gates to a simple CPU using a Hardware Description Language
  - Evaluate computer performance and compare performance on different architectures and designs
  - Describe and critique I/O and Parallel Hardware

===== Lecture Times =====

  * Section A: Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:30pm - 7:00pm, CLH A