Lecture 3 hours; 3 credits.
Prerequisites: CS 270.
A detailed and quantitative study of the architecture of modern
uni-processor computers.
The major components are: the technology drivers, performance
measures, instruction sets (including 80X86, VAX, and a generic
RISC which is very similar to the MIPS series),
processor implementation, advanced pipelining and superscalar features,
cache and memory design, and I/O. The emphasis is on obtaining
quantitative measures of performance, describing interactions of the
various components, studying trade-offs between the components in commercial
processors, and integration into a complete computer system including
interaction of the software and hardware. (offered spring)