Fig. 1: This computer costs more than your car.
Overview
Lecture location: Wilkinson 132 + Zoom (hybrid: in-person or remote)
Lecture time: MTuWTh, 10:30AM - 12:00PM
Instructor: Dr. Tyler Bletsch
Email: Tyler.Bletsch AT duke.edu
Office Hours: After class til nobody's left or I get hungry/sleepy; also by appointment
Recitation location: Wilkinson 132 + Zoom (hybrid: in-person or remote)
Recitation time: TTh, 1:00PM - 2:15PM
Undergraduate Teaching Assistants:
- Maverick Chung (maverick.chung AT duke.edu)
- Yi Chen (yi.chen679 AT duke.edu)
- Sam Thompson (sam.thompson AT duke.edu)
- Aaric Han (aaric.han AT duke.edu)
Course Textbook: David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, 5th edition, Morgan-Kaufmann.
→ Available free online from Duke Library here! (Physical copy from Amazon, AddAll) —
Not the "ARM" edition or the "Revised Printing"
Links:
- Piazza forum - get help and discuss course material
- GradeScope - submit assignments and see feedback
- Sakai - see grades
- The NAME BOARD - spreadsheet for getting in queue for office hours and recitation help
- Gitlab - The git repository for assignments
- Anonymous feedback - use this form to send anonymous feedback to the instructor
Adaptation to hybrid format
Due to the COVID-19 situation, this offering will be taught hybrid in-person and online. For remote people, the plan is for a one-to-one translation from in-person to online as follows:- Remote students hardware requirements:
- a reliable computer
- decent internet access (sufficient for video streaming and screen sharing in both directions)
- a microphone
- a webcam is strongly encouraged, but not strictly required
- Remote student responsibilities:
- To attend lectures and recitations fully (with focus and free of external distraction)
- TIMEZONE NOTE: If class/recitation is within 8am-7pm local time for you, attendance is expected, else strongly recommended. Students significantly outside of the U.S. Eastern timezone are encouraged to take the course in a later semester when on-campus attendence is possible. Such students are permitted to take this online offering, but asynchronous help will be best-effort, so the instructor therefore disclaims responsibility for difficulties arising from being unable to meet for usual class, recitation, and office hours.
- Asynchronous mode: If you have a timezone or life issue preventing you from making lectures/recitations, please fill out this form to formally request to take the course in asynchronous mode. See the form for details on that this means.
- To keep up with electronic communications and the course calendar
- To work on assignments consistently over time and submit them on time
- (MOST IMPORTANT) To proactively ask questions in lecture, recitation, and office hours!
- To attend lectures and recitations fully (with focus and free of external distraction)
- Class format: Lectures and recitations will be given synchronously at the currently scheduled times in-person and via simultaneous Zoom meeting. Students are strongly encouraged to interrupt (either vocally and/or via the 'raise hand' facility in Zoom) to ask questions. Lectures and recitations will be recorded and made available shortly after for students to review later. Nevertheless, attendence is expected for all students not approved for
asynchronous mode (see above). - Office hours: Instructor and TA office hours will be held in a mix of fully-online and hybrid modes. During recitations and office hours, the Zoom "breakout room" facility will be used to allow for 1:1 questions and help. Students can use screen sharing to show their problem, and even enable remote control to allow TAs or the instructor to indicate or demonstrate corrections.
- Exams: Exams will be asynchronous and online. Details will be given as exam dates approach.
- Resources: In addition to the usual resources listed on this page, alternate lecture videos from a past offering of the course will also be made available as a secondary source (see resources below).
- Grading/content: Grading will be traditional letter grades. Assignment quantity and content will be largely unchanged from the usual offering.
Schedule
Q1-2 with Aaric HanSyllabus & policies
Course synopsis
Computer structure, machine language, instruction execution, addressing techniques, and digital representation of data. Computer systems organization, logic design, microprogramming, and interpreters. Symbolic coding and assembly systems.Prerequisite: Computer Science 201 or consent of instructor.
Grading breakdown
This course will require readings from the textbook, problem sets, programming assignments, and digital logic design. Grading breakdown:
| Category | % |
|---|---|
| Homework | 55% |
| Midterm exam | 15% |
| Final exam | 25% |
| Recitation | 5% |
Homework grading
You are expected to complete the homework individually unless otherwise stated. However, you may discuss topics covered in the class.
Late homework submissions incur penalties as follows:
- Submission is 0-24 hours late: total score is multiplied by 0.9
- Submission is 24-48 hours late: total score is multiplied by 0.8
- Submission is more than 48 hours late: total score is multiplied by the Planck constant (as measured in J·s)
NOTE: If you feel in advance that you may need an extension, contact the instructor. We can work with you if you see a scheduling problem coming, but extensions cannot be granted at or near the due date!
Your homework grade will be based on what you submit to Sakai and when you submit it. The common excuses listed below will be rejected for the reasons shown:
| Excuse | Thing you could have done which invalidates excuse |
|---|---|
| My internet was slow or flaky so my submission was late. | Submit with plenty of margin. There's no reason the assignment can't be submitted HOURS OR DAYS in advance. |
| I meant to submit, but I forgot to click the submit button. | After submission, leave and re-visit the submission page to make double-sure your file is uploaded properly. |
| My computer broke and I lost my work! | It's the modern era. Use one of the dozens of data mirroring or backup services: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box (free at Duke!), Crashplan, or just good old fashioned local backups. You should be able to set your laptop on fire and lose zero bytes of work. |
| I submitted the wrong file, let me send you the right file! | After submission, re-download your files from Sakai to verify it's correct. Test it from scratch to ensure it's what you expect. |
| One tiny thing was wrong, and I can fix it! Let me get a regrade! | The time to find those bugs is before submission. When you've built your program/circuit, you're not done...that's when testing begins! Test your solution under a variety of conditions. See here for a primer on software testing. |
| I didn't understand the requirements, let me fix my program and get a regrade! | If you're the slightest bit unsure if your program meets the requirements, ask for clarification in lecture, recitation, or Piazza. If you're worried your submission won't pass our testing, run through it with a TA or the instructor. |
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but this is the part of your academic career where we build individual competence, and as in the real world, oversights can be costly.
Recitation grading
Recitation is where you'll learn concrete skills to complement the lecture's theoretical material, and is essential. Recitation grading works as follows:- Attendance at recitation is expected. Students attending and making good faith effort will receive full credit for the day.
Grade appeals
All regrade requests must be in writing. Email the TAs with your questions. After speaking with the TAs, if you still have concerns, contact the instructorAll regrade requests must be submitted to the instructor no later than 1 week after the assignment was returned to you.
Academic integrity
I take academic integrity extremely seriously. Academic misconduct will not be tolerated, and all suspected violations of the Duke Undergraduate Honor Code will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. A student found responsible for academic dishonesty faces formal disciplinary action, which may include suspension. A student twice suspended automatically faces a minimum 5-year separation from Duke University.In addition to the measures taken by the Office of Student Conduct, the affected assignment(s) will receive zero credit, or possibly -100% in egregious cases.
If you are considering this course of action, please see me instead, and we can work something out! I want every student in my course to be successful.
Resources
- Recordings of Dr. Sorin's section of ECE/CS 250: Spring 2019, Spring 2016
- Remote access to Linux machines.
- We will use the Duke OIT Linux machines for portions of this course. Please read this document on how to remotely access these machines.
- Unix Tutorial
- You should also go through this short tutorial on Linux.
- File Access
- You can use CIFS to access the files in your home directory. Please see the OIT general documentation on CIFS as well as tutorials for Windows or Mac.
- Tools -- Text Editors
- nedit and gedit are a fairly simple GUI-based editors on the Linux machines.
- If you want to become a more sophisticated user of Linux editors you can explore gvim, vim, or emacs on your own.
- Alternately, you can use a local text editor and save files over CIFS or SFTP. For example, Notepad++ on Windows includes an SFTP plugin.
- C Programming Language
- A full Coursera course on C by Prof. Drew Hilton.
- Dr. Bletsch's "C and Software Tools" course from NC State -- has lots of C programming resources
- Video snippets by Prof Drew Hilton (Duke ECE)
- This is an MIT OpenCourseWare set of lectures that does a good job of covering the basics for C programming.
- C Programming Examples
- C Memory Layout Example array as list
- C Bit Manipulation bit manipulation of Hex to extract float fields or for a float input with casting via pointers extract float fields from float input .
- C Memory Layout Example array as list
- Tools -- Compilers (gcc)
- Compilation: gcc -o newApp test.c
- Generate compile time warnings: gcc -Wall test.c
- Include debug symbols into the application: gcc -g -o newApp test.c
- Introduction to gcc
- Tools -- Debugger (gdb)
- Documentation
- GDB essentials
- Quick reference card (annotated version with most useful commands highlighted)
- MIPS Instructions
- SPIM: A MIPS32 Simulator
- Download the appropriate binary for your platform from the SPIM web site.
- Assembly Programming Examples
- Logic Design Online Book
- Pragmatic Logic by William J. Eccles
- Logic Design Tool
- Logisim is a convenient tool that runs on any platform (Mac, Windows, Linux). You will use Logisim to design and test circuits. Click through the download links until you arrive at the sourceforge.net site and then look for the green download button. Click download and it should autodetect your system so you get the right version.
- Caches and Virtual Memory
- Caching and virtual memory calculator spreadsheet
- Cache Interaction Policies with Main Memory by Gurpur Prabhu at Iowa State -- discusses why write-back/write-allocate and write-through/write-no-allocate usually go together.
- Paging notes by Trek Palmer at UMass -- a good summary of the topic (mirrored locally).