Basic principles of processor design, instruction set architecture, pipelining, design of advanced memory hierarchies, multithreading, task-level and instruction-level parallelism, inter-processor communication models, multiprocessors, future trends.

Course Objectives

To give a comprehensive discussion about the latest develeopments on computer architecture and recent microprocessors on the market. To study the latest research topics by focusing especially on Pentim 4, multicore and EPIC processors.

Recommended or Required Reading

David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy. Computer Organization and Design . 3rd Ed. 2005. Morgan Kaufmann Pub. ,John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson. Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach; 4th ed., Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. ,Hesham El-Rewini, Mostafa Abd-El-Barr. Advanced Computer Architecture and Parallel Processing. 2005, Wiley, online library.

Learning Outcomes

1. To have knowledge of computer architecture fundamentals

2. To be able to design microprocessors

3. To know the state-of-the-art of computer architectures

4. To know the state-of-the-art of parallel computing and multi-core architectures

Grading

Midterm: 30%

Research Presentation: 30%

Final: 40%