CMSC 240: Principles of Computer Organization

Instructors: John Dougherty and David Wonnacott

Semester & Year: Fall 2008

Schedule: Lecture: T/Th 1:00-2:30 in KINSC E309; Lab is any one hour on F 2:00-4:00

Text: Digital Design and Computer Architecture, by David Harris and Sarah Harris
Recommended (or an acceptable alternate text): Computer Engineering: Hardware Design, by M. Morris Mano.
"The Haverford Educational RISC Architecture" by David Wonnacott (this booklet is available with a nice cover at the Haverford book store (the lulu.com version, but without the shipping cost) or you can print your own (without the cool cover) from the HERA web site)

Requirements:

Midterm examination(s) covering the first half of the course:(1) combinational circuits; and (2) sequential circuits.
Final examination covering just the concepts from the last half of the course: computer architecture and organization.
Lab exercises
Written homework or "mini-homework"
Class participation

Collaboration: You are encouraged to discuss the lecture material and the labs and problems with other students, subject to the following restriction: the only "product" of your discussion should be your memory of it - you may not write up solutions together, or exchange written work or computer files.
Collaboration is not allowed on exams.

Prerequisites: CMSC 106 (or 206 at Bryn Mawr). Math/CS 231 (Discrete Mathematics) is also highly recommended. Concurrent enrollment in this and two other CMSC lab courses requires permission of the instructor.

Description: A lecture/laboratory course studying the hierarchical design of modern digital computers: combinatorial and sequential logic design, memory and processor organization, instruction sets, assembly language, elements of operating systems, and advanced topics as time permits (such as parallel processing)

Lab Assignments:

Lab 0: Introduction to tkgate and Thinking About Circuits (also the "attached pages" on lab 0a and lab 0b)
Lab 1: Boolean Logic and Combinational Circuits
Lab 2: Modular Combinational Circuits
Lab 3: Arithmetic
Lab 4: Latches and Flip-Flops
Lab 5: High-Level Sequential Circuits
Lab 6: RTL and Memory Systems
Lab 7: Microprocessors and Arithmetic (instruction memory, registers, partial ALSU, partial instruction decoding for the HERA microprocessor)
Lab 8: Memory: Obtaining Instructions and Data (read/write data memory, decoding and execution of memory operations for the HERA microprocessor)

A syllabus from 2006 is available, but this still has chapter numbers from Mano's book; a revised syllabus will be posted here and handed out in class.

Page maintained by John Dougherty, David Wonnacott, and Rachel Heaton.
Computer Science Department, Haverford College.