CIS 451 Computer Architecture
Fall 2019

Contact Information:

Instructor:	Zachary Kurmas	Office:	MAK C-2-316
Phone:	331-8688	Office Hours:	MW 3:00-4:00; M 5:15-6:00
Home page:	http://www.cis.gvsu.edu/~kurmasz		F 11:00-12:00

Course Objectives:

At the end of the course, students will be able to

• discuss differing high-level design philosophies (including CISC and RISC) and how different CPUs incorporate those philosophies.
• explain what branch prediction is and how it works
• discuss the operation, benefits, and limitations of super-pipelining
• discuss the relationship between instruction-level parallelism and coarser grained parallelism
• discuss different types of data hazards and their relevance to different CPU designs
• quantitatively analyze the effects of different hardware configurations
• describe a typical, modern I/O configuration
• explain why different CPU designs are not directly comparable

Text:

• Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (6th edition) by John Hennessy and David Patterson. ISBN: 9780128119051
• Digital Design and Computer Architecture (2nd edition) by David Money Harris and Sarah L. Harris. ISBN: 9780123944245 (optional)
• Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, 4th Edition by David Patterson and John Hennessy. ISBN: 1558606041 (optional)

Pre-Requsites

CIS 351

Grading:

Points for this class are shown in the table below. Note also the additional conditions that follow.

Point distribution	Grading scale
Category % Participation 10% Homework and Projects 40% Exams 50% Total 100%	Letter grade Minimum percentage A 94% A- 90% B+ 87% B 84% B- 80% C+ 77% C 74% C- 70% D+ 67% D 64%

Additional Conditions:

• You must have a passing average on the tests to pass the class.
• Your final grade may be at most one letter grade higher than your test average.
• I reserve the right to make minor adjustments to the point distribution. In particular, I may make minor adjustments to the weights of each test if we cover more or less material than expected.

Important Dates:

• Drop Day: Friday, 25 October
• Final Exam: Monday, 9 December, 6:00 p.m.

Course Policies:

• Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the due date, unless specified otherwise.
• The penalty for submitting assignments late varies by assignment. It could be as little as one or two points, or as much as no credit for the assignment. However, assignments more than 14 days late may receive a 0 even if "I just forgot to turn it in."
• Unless specified otherwise, all assignments are to be completed individually.
• The deadline to drop with a "W" is Friday, 25 October. Remember, I cannot and will not drop this class for you.
• Attendance is required. I understand that absences are occasionally necessary; however, I reserve the right to lower grades for excessive absences.
• This course is subject to the GVSU policies listed at www.gvsu.edu/coursepolicies/ as well as the CIS Academic Honestey Policy.

Special Assistance:

If there is any student in this class who has special needs because of learning, physical or other disability, please contact me and Disability Support Services (DSS) at 616.331.2490. Furthermore, if you have a disability and think you will need assistance evacuating this classroom and/or building in an emergency situation, please make me aware so I can develop a plan to assist you.

Updated Saturday, 23 November 2019, 12:58 PM