4/26/26 The MT exam has been graded. The two highest grades are 91 and 84; the two lowest are 12 and 14. The average is 58.3.
4/15/2026

Midterm Exam on Thursday, April 23, 2026

The midterm exam will be held on Thursday, April 23rd  from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. It will be an Open Textbook (the 7th edition only (printed version, not an e-book version nor its pdf printout) with no notes there!), Closed Notes & Closed Friends exam.

All topics discussed in the class (except for single-cycle and multi-cycle MIPS processors) can be subjects of the exam questions.

Do not bring any paper. Bring a simple calculator, pen, pencil, and eraser to work on diagrams.  No phones are allowed during the exam.

 Be prepared!

1/22/2026 The first lecture is on Jan. 29, 2026. No use use phones/computers during lectures!

ESE 545 Computer Architecture Spring 2026

 

Course Description: This course focuses on the techniques of quantitative analysis and evaluation of modern computer systems. The emphasis is on instruction set design, pipelining, different types of parallelism (instruction, data, and thread level), and memory hierarchies. Students will undertake a design project on the multimedia processor design related to the course contents. The project is to be done with a use of hardware description languages, such as VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog, as well as modern CAD systems, such as Cadence, Mentor Graphics, etc.

 

Neither VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog languages nor the use of CAD systems will be taught in the class.

 

Course’s website: http://www.ece.sunysb.edu/~midor/ESE545/index.html

Instructor:           Mikhail Dorojevets

Office:                  243 Light Engineering, 632-8611

Office hours:       W 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

E-mail:                 mikhail.dorojevets@stonybrook.edu

 

Lectures:            Thursday 154 Light Engineering, 5:00 - 7:50 PM  

 

The last lecture notes (pdf) are here. (If necessary, use "Open link in new window" to see and save the lecture slides.)

The last lecture notes (pdf) are here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Textbook:          J. Hennessy and D. Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Seventh edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (Elsevier), 2025, ISBN: 978-0-443-15406-5

 

                  

Other Highly Recommended Books:

 

1. David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Fifth/Sixth Edition.   

2. Peter J. Ashenden. The Designer’s Guide to VHDL, 3rd edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-12-088785-9.

 

 

Exam: There will be one mid-term exam in late April  (no final exam in May)

 

Project Deadlines:

Each team must discuss its proposed instruction set with Instructor and got it approved before submitting their instruction set table report by email to Instructor no later than: 11:00 PM Feb. 19, 2026

Project Part 1 (a dual-pipe processing core with the RF & forwarding and write-back stages) (by email): 11:00 PM March 29, 2026

Full Project submission (by email): 1:00 PM, May 3, 2026

Project presentation by each team to Instructor in the Graduate Linux lab using lab computers only (room 183): May 4, 2026.

 

 

Grading:

Mid-term exam:                                 50%

Project (one or two student teams):   50%

 

Thanks to the ESE 545 course and its design project, many students got job offers from the leading computer & chip design companies.

 

If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact on your ability to carry out assigned course work, I would urge that you contact the staff in the Disabled Student Services office (DSS), room 133 Humanities, 632-6748/TDD. DSS will review your concerns and determine, with you, what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation of disability is confidential.