ECS 154A: Computer Architecture

Subject
ECS 154A
Title
Computer Architecture
Status
Active
Units
4.0
Effective Term
2017 Winter Quarter
Learning Activities
Lecture: 3 hours
Discussion: 1 hour
Description
Introduction to digital design. Interfacing of devices for I/O, memory and memory management. Input/output programming, via wait loops, hardware interrupts and calls to operating system services. Hardware support for operating systems software. Only 1 unit of credit allowed for students who have taken EEC 170. GE Prior to Fall 2011: SciEng. GE: SE.
Prerequisites
ECS 050 or EEC 070
Credit Limitation
Only 1 unit of credit allowed for students who have taken EEC 170.
Enrollment Restrictions
Open to Computer Science and Computer Science Engineering Majors only.

Summary of Course Content

  1. Combinational and Sequential Digital Design Boolean algebra, gates. Commonly used MSI circuits such as multiplexers and decoders. Simple arithmetic circuits. Latches and flip-flops. Finite state machine design. Use of simple digital design simulation software to aid in hierarchical system development.
  2. Interrupts and Interconnection hardware Hardware interrupts. Synchronous and asynchronous buses. Bus arbitration.
  3. Memory Types of memory. Decoding of system-level to chip-level addresses. Caches and the memory hierarchy.
  4. Hardware for Support of Operating Systems Hardware support to optimize resource usage, and to implement the abstraction of a separate machine for each user. Design and use of memory-management hardware, either within-CPU or via separate MMU, to support efficient and convenient OS memory allocation.

Illustrative Reading

  • David Patterson and John Hennessy. Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Morgan Kaufmann, 2011. • Stephen Brown, Fundamentals of Digital Logic Custom, McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Potential Course Overlap
None

Final Exam
Yes Final Exam

Justification for No Final Exam
final exam

Course Category

Upper Division