4/8/23	Midterm #2 will take place at 5:30 PM - 6:50 PM on Wednesday, April 24. 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. Be prepared!
4/8/24	Homework #6 is accessible on the homework problems page. The password for HW6 is hs6_cv8_24 The deadline for Homework #6 is Apr. 18, 2024 (TA hours).
4/1/24	Homework #5 is accessible on the homework problems page. The password for HW5 is hs5_pn3_24 The deadline for Homework #5 is Apr. 9, 2024 (TA hours).
3/25/24	The extended deadline for Homework #4 is Tuesday April 2, 2024 (TA hours).
3/6/24	Homework #4 is accessible on the homework problems page. The password for HW4 is hs4_smc_24 The deadline for Homework #4 is March 28, 2024 (TA hours).
3/5/24	The MT1 exam has been graded. The highest grade is 83, and lowest one is 17. The average is 53.1. The grades are sent to TA. The results show the strong correlation between the attendance and the grades. This is the last warning call to every student whose grade is below 40 that he needs to change his work attitude in order to pass the course.
2/14/24	First Mid-term Exam will be on Monday, March 4, 5:30 - 6:50 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!
2/11/24	Homework #3 is accessible on the homework problems page. The deadline for Homework #3 is Feb. 27 (TA hours).
1/31/24	Homework #2 is accessible on the homework problems page. The deadline for Homework #2 is Feb. 15 (TA hours).
1/24/24	Homework #1 is accessible on the homework problems page. The deadline for Homework #1 is Feb. 1 (TA hours).
1/14/24	The first lecture is on Monday, Jan. 22, 2024. No use of phones/computers during lectures!