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TDTS10 Computer Architecture


Lecture notes

The course recommended textbook is: "Computer Organization and Design - The Hardware / Software Interface" (4th edition) by David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. An electronic copy of the book is available in the university library. The slides will be added incrementally as the course progresses. I plan to make available in the piazza class page TDTS10@Piazza preliminary versions of the slides before the corresponding lectures.
Lecture Chapters
Introduction to Computer Abstraction and Technology:
  • Different types of instructions
  • Components of a computer
  • Performance
1.1-1.4
Instruction Set Architecture:
  • Different types of instructions
  • Operands and operations
  • RISC vs CISC
  • Design principles for instruction set architecture
2.1-2.7, 2.18-2.19
Arithmetic:
  • Addition and substraction
  • Multiplication
  • Division
3.1-3.3
The Processor:
  • Fundamentals of datapath and control
  • Pipelining
  • Instruction-level parallelism
4.1-4.5, 4.10
Memory:
  • Memory hierarchy
  • Principle of locality
  • Caches and their performance issues
  • Virtual memory
 5.1-5.6
Input / Output:
  • Reliability
  • Disk and Flash storage
  • Interconnects
  • Interfacing with the opreating system
6.1-6.6
Advanced topics:
  • Introduction to parallel programming
  • Shared memory
  • Classification into SISD, SIMD, MIMD and SPMD
  • Multicore
  • Graphics Processing Units
7.1-7.6

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Last updated: 2015-11-08