CSL 211 - Computer Architecture

Semester 1
Academic Year 2015 - 2016

Number of credits: 5.

Lecture Times: Wednesdays - 1:30 PM to 2:20 PM, Thursdays - 2:25 PM to 3:15 PM

and Fridays - 3:20 PM to 4:10 PM.

Lab/Oce hour Times: Will be announced soon.

Class Room: L2 .

Computing Labs: Primarily, you can use two computing labs on campus - both located
on the ground floor. In case of any questions regarding the computing resources, please
contact Mr. Ashu Kaushik. He sits in the computing lab 1 and can be reached at:
info@iitrpr.ac.in.

Instructor: Nitin Auluck, Department of CSE, oce: room 112, phone: 01881-242136,
email: nitin@iitrpr.ac.in, web: http://www.iitrpr.ac.in/cse/nitin. While sending
email, please include CSL 211 in the subject.

Teaching Assistant: Shipra Sharma, PhD Scholar, Department of CSE, room 1201 ,
email: shipra.sharma@iitrpr.ac.in.

Textbook: Computer Organisation and Architecture, Smruti Ranjan Sarangi, McGraw

Hill, First Edition, 2015, ISBN: 978-93-329-0183-4, 666 pages.

Reference book: Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Inter-

face, David Patterson and John Henessey, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Fourth Edition,
ISBN: 978-0-12-374750-1, 919 pages.

Moodle: This course will have a moodle web page: www.iitrpr.ac.in/moodle. This
page is accessible both within or outside the campus network. All home-works/labs need
to be submitted only electronically on this web page. Supplementary reading material
and course related announcements will be posted on this page. Please ensure that you
visit this page on a regular basis.

Course Prerequisites: GEL 103 - Introduction to Computing and GEL 104 - Principals
of Electrical Engineering.
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advisable to take an appointment first by sending email.

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 Course Overview: Subsystems of a computer; Instructions and their formats; Assem-
bly programming; Performance metrics; Performance comparison; Information represen-
tation; Integer and floating point arithmetic; Processor data path design; Control unit
design; Microprogramming; Performance improvement with pipe-lining ; Memory organi-
zation - cache and virtual memory; input/output organization, interrupts and DMA.

Tentative List of Topics from the textbook:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Computer Architecture.

Chapter 2: The Language of Bits.
Chapter 3: Assembly Language.
Chapter 4: ARM Assembly Language.
Chapter 7: Computer Arithmetic.
Chapter 8: Processor Design.
Chapter 9: Principles of Pipe-lining.
Chapter 10: The Memory System.
Other selected topics, if time permits.

Weightage:

Home-works/labs: 30 %.
Quizzes (may be unannounced): 5 %.
Minor exam: 32.5 %.
Major exam: 32.5 %.

Student Responsibilities:

1. Attending classes.
2. Maintaining decorum in the class.
3. Reading the textbook, and other assigned material. It is better to start reading from
day one as opposed to waiting till just before the exams.
4. Completing and submitting the home-works and labs on time.
5. Sitting in the exams.

Course Policies: Please note that enrolling in this course implies that you accept all of
the course policies.

Late Home-work and Lab Policy: All home works and labs shall have a due date
and time, for example - 11 PM, August 31. The time stamp of the lab/home-work
shall be taken by moodle at the time of submission. Please ensure that you submit
on time. For each day (weekends included) that the lab or home-work is late, 20 %
of the grade for that lab or home-work will be deducted. This means that each lab
or home-works value is 0 if it is submitted more than 5 days late. If you need extra
time due to some emergency, please come and see us before the home-work or lab
is due and extra time may be scheduled on a case by case basis.

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 Home-work/lab submission:
1. Before submission, ensure that your home-work/lab meet all the specified cri-
teria. An instruction sheet shall be given to you soon in the beginning of the
course. All the criteria is specified in this sheet. It is your responsibility to
ensure that each home-work/lab you submit meets all the criteria.
2. Ensure that you thoroughly check all home-works/labs before submitting on
moodle. You will get only one opportunity for submitting each home-work/lab.
It will not be possible to consider another version of the particular home-
work/lab for submission.
Plagiarism Policy:
1. Although it is all right to discuss the labs and home-works with your class
mates/friends in general terms, do not share your work with each other. All
work that you submit must be your own. Sharing your code or copying someone
elses code is plagiarism and is a very serious issue.
2. We will be using tools for checking all submitted home-works/labs for similarity.
3. If it is discovered that some form of plagiarism has been done in a home-work or
lab, all concerned students shall be given a zero in the home-work/lab. Further
plagiarism by the same student(s) may result in an F in the course and the
matter may be reported to higher authorities.
4. Cheating in exams is also very serious and the involved students will receive a 0
in that exam, in addition to further action taken by the institute.
5. For further details on what constitutes plagiarism, please see pages 105 and 106
of the Handbook of Information.
Regrading Policy: If you are not satisfied with the way that any home-work, lab
or exam has been graded, you have the option of submitting it for re-grading. Here
are some guidelines:
All re-grading requests should be submitted formally in writing. Please provide
a written explanation as to why you think that the grading is incorrect. Please
note that any oral request shall not be entertained.
This written explanation should be submitted along with your graded home-
work, lab or exam.
If it is determined that your request has merit, re-grading will be done . On the
other hand, if we find that your request does not have merit and is frivolous (not
serious), then there may be some penalty. Please note that this is not a scare
tactic, but just to ensure that non-serious requests are avoided.
Your re-grading request should be received within one week from the date
that the graded home-work, lab or exam has been handed out to you.
Please note that this procedure is intended to correct serious errors in grading.
It is not intended as a opportunity to argue about each judgement call made by
the graders. It may be the case that graders sometimes take o 1-2 points too
many here and there, but it is also true that they also give you 1-2 points too
many just as often.
Our overall experience with regrade requests is that a small number of them lead
to a change in an exam grade, and an even smaller percentage have any eect
on the final grade for the course. We think that except in a few cases, it doesnt

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pay to regrade these assignments and exams, but even more importantly, it is a
waste of your time to agonize over the possibility of gaining an additional point.
You can almost certainly gain more points in the course by devoting this time
to studying for the next exam or working on the next lab.