CS 325-Computer Architecture

Lecture 01
Introduction

Instructor: Asim Rehan

arehan@numl.edu.pk

National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad

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Instructor

 Asim Rehan
 Email: arehan@numl.edu.pk
 Office: Room (20 – Basement Ghazali Block)

Office Hours:
Will later be Displayed outside my office.

 TA
 TBA

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About the course

 Credit Hours: 2.5 + 0.5

 Text Book:
 Computer organization and Design
:The Hardware/Software Interface,
3rd Edition,
 By Patterson and Hennessy

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Grading Criteria (Tentative)

 Quizzes (Class) = 10%

 Assignments (Class) + Presentation on topic =
10%
 Mid Term = 30%
 Final = 50%

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Plagiarism/Cheating Policy
 Zero Tolerance
 Zero points in assignment/ quiz/ project/ exam

 Second Time Zeros in all assignment/ quiz/

 Third Time Grade F in course

 Report to HOD

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Quiz/Assignment Policy
 Quizzes will mostly be unannounced.

 Late submission of assignments will not be

entertained so do not bother to visit me for
submission.

 Exception may occur *

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Are Computers Smart?
To a programmer:
 Very complex operations / functions:
„(map (lambda (x) (* x x)) '(1 2 3 4))

Automatic memory management:

„List l = new List;

‰
“Basic” structures:
„Integers, floats, characters, plus, minus, print
commands

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Are Computers Smart?
 In real life at the lowest level:
‰
Only a handful of operations:
„{and, or, not}

 No automatic memory management.

 Only 2 values:
„{0, 1} or {low, high} or {off, on}

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Computer Organization
 What is it?
‰
computer architecture
„ programmer's view of the machine data
representation and operations

‰computer organization
„structural relationships not visible to the programmer

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Computer Architecture’s: Changing
Definition
 1950s to 1960s: Computer Architecture Course:
Computer Arithmetic
 1970s to mid 1980s: Computer Architecture Course:
Instruction Set Design, especially ISA
appropriate for compilers
 1990s: Computer Architecture Course:
Design of CPU, memory system, I/O system,
Multiprocessors, Networks
 2000s: Computer Architecture Course: Non
Von-Neumann architectures, Reconfiguration,
Focused MIPs

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Why Study It?
 you want to be a computer scientist
 it makes you a better programmer
 performance: programming is more than just
getting the answer
 it's fun to learn how things work
 you may need to buy a computer someday

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What is “Computer Architecture”?

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Levels of Representation

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Anatomy: 5 components of any Computer

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Technology Trends: Memory Capacity
(Single-Chip DRAM)

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