Second Midterm

March 31st, 2009

The second midterm will be Thursday 9 April. It will cover everything through Lecture 15 where we looked at the implementation of the computer on 26 March.

Pipelining

March 31st, 2009

Today we’ll introduce the concept of pipelining to optimize computer performance.

Slides for today.

Readings

March 31st, 2009

For the next few lectures we’ll be talking about pipelining to optimize the performance of our computer. Read in Chapter 6, sections 6.1 through 6.6.

Implementing our computer

March 26th, 2009

Today we’ll take a high-level view of implementation of a computer using the pieces we’ve discussed so far. It will look horrible but it actually is pretty simple.

Slides for today.

This is from chapter 5 in your book.

Problem Set 6

March 26th, 2009

Problem Set 6 will give you a bit of practice with floating point arithmetic and measuring performance.

Delayed until 7 April.

Finite State Machines and Control of Execution

March 24th, 2009

Today we’ll cover the last piece of technology that we need to build a working computer.

Slides for today.

Readings associated with today’s and upcoming lectures include: Appendix B.10-B.12 and Ch 5.1-5.4

Problem Set 5

March 17th, 2009

In this problem set you’ll get some practice with gates and transistors.

Memory

March 17th, 2009

In the next lecture we’ll talk about the implementation of memory.

Readings associated with this lecture can be found in B.7-B.9 and B.12.

Slides for the next lecture.

Performance

March 5th, 2009

Today we’ll talk about measures of computer system performance that help designers and users evaluate implementation issues.

Slides for today.

Readings for future lectures

March 3rd, 2009

We’re heading into Chapter 4 Thursday (or possibly next Tuesday) so you’ll want to read ahead.