CSEE W3827 Fundamentals of Computer Systems Summer 2020

Lectures

Class meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:00 - 4:10 PM, May 27 - July 1 in online.

Staff

Overview

This course examines how the 1s and 0s that form the foundation of digital computing are organized, structured, and manipulated to produce full-fledged computer systems. In bridging this gap, the course will cover many subjects beginning with binary logic, combinatorial and sequential circuit design, memory structures, instruction set architectures, and, ultimately, basic processor design.

Prerequisites

An introductory programming course, such as COMS 1004 or 1007. You need to understand the basics of imperative, sequential programming to understand the assembly language programming we will discuss.

Schedule

Date	Lecture	Notes	Reading	Due
Wed May 27	Representing Numbers (annotated)		1.4
Fri May 29	Boolean Logic (annotated)		1.5,2.1-2.7
Mon Jun 1	Combinational Logic (annotated)		2.8,2.9,5.2
Wed Jun 3	Sequential Logic (annotated) Finite State Machines (annotated)		3.1-3.3,3.5 3.4
Fri Jun 5				HW 1 HW 1
Mon Jun 8	Transistors (annotated) Memory Elements (annotated)		5.5
Wed Jun 10	The MIPS Instruction Set (annotated) The SPIM Simulator (annotated)		6.1-6.7
Sun Jun 14				HW 2 HW 2
Mon Jun 15	(MIPS ISA continued)
Wed Jun 17	MIPS Microarchitecture (annotated)		7.1-7.3
Sun Jun 21				HW 3 hw3.zip
Mon Jun 22	A Multicycle MIPS Processor (annotated)		7.4
Wed Jun 24	Pipelining MIPS (annotated)		7.5
Mon Jun 29	Caches (annotated)		8.3
Tue Jun 30				HW 4
Wed Jul 1	Final Review (Boolean annotated) (combinational annotated) (sequential annotated) (transistors annotated) (memory annotated) (MIPS ISA annotated)
Wed Jul 1	24-hr take-home exam

The Digital Circuit Simulator

The Inkscape SVG Editor

MIPS Resources

• MIPS32 Instruction Set Quick Reference
• The SPIM Simulator
• Some tiny programs that run under SPIM

Optional Text

David Harris and Sarah Harris. Digital Design and Computer Architecture. Morgan-Kaufmann, Second Edition, 2012. A perfect fit for our class, half of this book is devoted to classical digital logic design; the other half to processor architecture centered on the practical, but teachable, MIPS processor.

Homework

• Each homework assignment is due at at the beginning of lecture on the due date. Late submissions will not be accepted.
• You may discuss homework problems with your classmates, but your work must ultimately be your own.
• Write the names of any collaborators at the top of your submission.

Grading

Academic Honesty Policy

You may discuss homework problems with your classmates, but you must write up your solution independently and understand it. Students turning in copied homeworks will be referred to the dean. See the Columbia CS department academic policies for more details.

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