CS665 - Computer Architecture

Spring 2024

Instructor: Professor Stephan Olariu

Course Description:
CS665 is a graduate core course in Computer Architecture. The main emphasis will be on identifying various quantitative aspects of computer design and on understanding and resolving sundry cost/performance tradeoffs involved in all aspects of computer architecture design, from functional organization to instruction set architecture, to pipelining, to memory hierarchy design, and beyond.

Although most of the course gravitates around single-CPU architectures, aspects of multiprocessor architectures will also be discussed.

Material: Tentative topical coverage

Text: The textbook used in this class is Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, 6-th Edition, Elsevier, 2019.

Prerequisite: An undergraduate Computer Architecture course, such as or own CS270 - Introduction to Computer Architecture or equivalent is highly recommended. Beware that students insufficiently prepared, that is, those who have not had an undergraduate Computer Architecture course, tend not to do well in CS665.

Grading Scheme: The course involve three tests. The tests will be administered through Canvas or some equivalent platform.

Office Hours: Fridays, 12:00pm - 1:00pm. To be held online via Zoom sessions.

Old Dominion University is committed to ensuring equal access to all qualified students with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Office of Educational Accessibility (OEA) is the campus office that works with students who have disabilities to provide and/or arrange reasonable accommodations.

The Office of Educational Accessibility is located at 1021 Student Success Center and their phone number is (757)683-4655. Additional information is available at the OEA website: http://www.odu.edu/educationalaccessibility/


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