When and where

Mon: 14:00 Lab, Wed/Fri: 11 to 12:30 Lecture hours


The goal of this course is to make students, understand, analyze, and appreciate the basic principles, design choices, and trade-offs associated in the field of digital systems and Computer Architecture. 10K feet view on the topics: Digital logic gates, combinational and dequential circuits, System stack and abstractions; instruction set; microarchitecture; Intro. to assembly language, modern processors and their front-end and back-end; memory systems; interaction with the OS; introduction to GPUs and TPUs.

If the above paragraph was boring, here is another attempt: the course will be about how computers (a.k.a. your smartphones, laptops, desktops, servers, and data centers) work, why they work the way they work, what can be done to make it better, faster, safer, and secure. The intent of the course is to provide 10K to one feet view on how various components of a computer work as a team.

Text books:
Digital Design and Computer Architecture, David Harris and Sarah Harris, Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., 2012
Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach, Fifth or Sixth edition, J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson (H and P), Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., 2019.
Computer Organization and Design, The Hardware/Software Interface, Fifth edition, D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy (P and H), Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., 2013.

Note for MTech. students: MS/PhD students can credit CS230/232 to complete their coursework requirements.