18-447 Introduction to Computer Architecture, Spring 2011

• Go to Blackboard for announcements and handouts
• Spring 2011 Lecture Notes (with Parallel Architecture)
• Spring 2009 Lecture Notes (without Parallel Architecture)
• A Short Intro to Synopsys Design Compiler
• A Short Intro to ModelSim Verilog Simulator

Computer architecture is the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create a computer that meets functional, performance and cost goals. This course introduces the basic principles and hardware structures of a modern programmable computer. We will learn, for example, how to design the control and datapath for a pipelined RISC processor and how to design fast memory and storage systems. The principles presented in lecture are reinforced in the laboratory through design and simulation of a register transfer (RT) implementation of a RISC processor pipeline in Verilog.

Prerequisites: 18-240 and (15-213 or 18-243) and (18340 or 18341 or 18348 or 18349 or 18320)

• Instructors
  • James C. Hoe
• Course Administrative Assistant
  • Shannon Halfhill
• Teaching Assisntants
  • Peter Klemperer (Head TA)
  • Benson Tsai
  • Joshua Wise

• See Blackboard for contact info and office hours

• Lecture: MW, 12:30PM to 02:20PM, DH A310
• Lab Section A: T, 01:30PM to 04:20PM, WEH 3716
• Lab Section B: F, 10:30AM to 01:20PM, WEH 3716
  Note: you can get checked off during either section period.

• Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Fourth Edition by Patterson and Hennessy, Morgan Kaufmann/Elsvier. (Required)
• Also useful, textbooks from 18-240 and 18-243

• Blackboard
• Computer Architecture Lab at Carnegie Mellon (CALCM)
• WWW Computer Architecture
• History of Computing (Computer History Museum)
• Microprocessor Lineage (Computer History Museum)
• OpenCores (repository of GPL hardware IPs)
• OpenSPARC (open-sourced SPARC T1 and T2 Verilog RTL and more)