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====== EECS4201 Computer Architecture  ======

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

This course presents the core concepts of computer architecture and design ideas embodied in many machines, and emphasizes a quantitative approach to cost/performance trade offs. This course concentrates on uniprocessor systems. A few machines are studied to illustrate how these concepts are implemented; how various trade offs that exist among design choices are treated; and how good designs make efficient use of technology. Future trends in computer architecture are also discussed.


===== Learning Outcomes of the Course =====

After successful completion of the course, students are expected to be able to:

  - Design cache, memory hierarchy, and virtual memory using different techniques to improve cost/performance ratio.
  - Demonstrate how dynamic scheduling and speculative execution can improve the system performance and explain how it is implemented in modern processors.
  - Evaluate different design alternatives and make quantitative/qualitative argument for one design over the other.
  - Identity the different types of parallelism (data, instruction, thread, transaction) for a given application.
  - Compare and evaluate different techniques (such as multithreading, multicore, or vector) to improve CPU performance

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

  * Section E: Tuesdays  and Thursdays, 10:00am - 11:30pm, CB 122