5/6/26 The MT2 exam has been graded and the grades are sent to TA. Two highest grades are 94 and 86; the two lowest ones are 11 and 14. The average is 50.0.

All grades are final. There will be NO discussion of them.

4/13/26 Homework #6 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #6 is April  23rd (TA hours).
4/13/26 Midterm #2 will take place at 5:00 - 6:20 PM on Monday, April 27.

It will be a Closed book Close notes Closed friends exam.

Do NOT bring any paper. Bring an eraser, pens, and pencils. You may bring a small, non-programmable calculator.

Do NOT use red ink when writing your solutions!

Keep all the pages stapled! 

NO cell phones can be present/used during the exam!

The exam will cover Chapter 4 through Chapter 5 of the textbook with the emphasis on: 

  • Single-cycle processor: datapath and control

  • Multicycle datapath implementation. Finite state machines.

  • Pipelining (concept, pipelined MIPS datapath, data forwarding, all types of hazards and stalls, implications of all types of hazards on CPU performance.

  • Memory hierarchy (caches, cache performance (including hit time, miss penalty, average memory access time); virtual memory, page tables, fully-associative and N-way set associative TLBs; integration of virtual memory, TLBs, and caches.

  • You will need to refresh your knowledge of the way the MIPS instructions are written in the MIPS assembly language, namely the order of destination and source registers.

Be prepared!

3/29/26 Homework #5 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #5 is April  14th (TA hours).
3/22/26 Homework #4 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #4 is April  2nd (TA hours).
3/16/26 The MT1 has been graded and the the grades sent to TA. The average is 44.2. For many students it's time to start working hard in order to pass the course.
3/2/26 As a reminder, the HW3 deadline is extended by two days to Thursday, March 5 (TA hours).
2/19/25 First Mid-term Exam will be on Monday, March 9, 5:00 - 6:20 PM

It will be a Closed-books, No-notes exam.  Do NOT bring any paper. A photocopy of the original "Green card" will be provided to you by the Instructor.

Bring an eraser, pens, and pencils. You may bring a small, non-programmable calculator. You are not allowed to use a calculator to do conversion between integer and floating point data!

Keep all the pages stapled! 

NO cell phones can be present/used during the exam!

The exam will cover Chapter 1 through Chapter 3 of the textbook with the emphasis on:

* CPU performance equations and Amdahl's law * MIPS instruction set * MIPS programming in machine (not pseudo-!) instructions * Functions and procedures * Big endian and little endian addressing * Binary arithmetic (full/half 1-bit adder, ripple carry adder, carry look ahead adder, binary multiplication (combinational and sequential) * Booth signed multiplication algorithm * The last version of the sequential divide algorithm * Floating point arithmetic (decimal to binary conversion w/o calculators, IEEE 754 FP single and double formats, FP add and multiply, rounding with guard, round, and sticky bits) *

Be prepared!
2/19/26 Homework #3 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #3 is March  3rd (TA hours).
2/4/26

We are starting to learn MIPS (RISC) ISA and MIPS assembly programming next week.

In case you are interested in simulating your MIPS code, here is the link to the

MARS (MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator)  for MIPS Assembly Language Programming: https://computerscience.missouristate.edu/mars-mips-simulator.htm

Important notice! The MARS simulator uses little endian addressing rather than big endian addressing in real MIPS.

2/4/26 Homework #2 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #2 is Feb.  19th (TA hours).
1/28/26 Homework #1 is accessible on the homework problems page.

The deadline for Homework #1 is Feb.  5th (TA hours).
1/28/26 All HW solutions must be handwritten and submitted in person.
1/22/26 The first lecture is on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. No use of phones/computers during lectures!