Quick Links
- Canvas
- Ed Discussion Forum (Replacement for Piazza)
- Gradescope
Announcements
- 2/5: Snow/ice day tomorrow! Hybrid lecture (Zoom link in the Canvas announcement).
- 1/30: WA1 released on Gradescope.
- 1/28: Office hours and recitations begin this week! See the schedule for details.
- 1/24: PA1 released! Please refer to Lecture 1.2 for a demo of walking through a similar assignment.
- 1/21: Welcome, students! You can find all relevant course information here. Our first lecture is Tuesday, January 21st. We look forward to seeing you there!
Contacting Us
Your two best ways to contact us:
- Post on the Ed discussion forum (preferred): posting publicly (or even privately) will ensure you receive a timely response.
- E-Mail the instructional staff mailing list: automatically broadcasts to all instructional staff.
Attempting to contact individual staff members will likely delay any response you may receive.
Overview
We will study the fundamentals of how computers work, including the software/hardware interface and key hardware components, such as the processor and memory hierarchy. For example, we will explore questions such as:- What are the components of a computer?
- How do these components work together to run code?
- How do computers represent data and code?
- How does high-level code become something the computer can execute?
- How can you write code that will run efficiently?
- C Programming in Linux. The C programming language. The Linux command-line (shell) environment. Standard libraries. Programming tools: compilers, build systems, debuggers, version control tools. Understanding requirements and exploring design choices. Writing clean code. Students will write C programs in a Linux shell environment and integrate them into pre-existing modules such as test harnesses and simulators.
- Representing and manipulating data. Binary encodings of, and basic operations on, basic data types: integers, floating-point numbers, characters, Unicode, and UTF-8. Derived data types: arrays, structures, unions, functions, pointers. Data alignment.
- Machine-level representation of programs. Machine-level encoding and execution of programs written in high-level programming languages. The RISC-V RV64I instruction set architecture (ISA). Data access instructions, arithmetic and logical operations, non-sequential control transfer, procedure call/return. Stack and heap disciplines for memory management. Code generation for C constructs. Techniques for explicit memory management.
- Processor organization and architecture. Basics of hardware logic. Single-cycle CPU implementation of the RV64I ISA. Memory hierarchy. Structure and behavior of caches. Memory performance.
This course is dense, fast, and a lot of work. You will be expected
to pick up concepts quickly and independently, and falling behind is
a real danger, especially if you skip class and recitation. Please
be proactive about learning and leverage all available resources to
succeed!