Digital Design and Computer Architecture

Abstract

The class provides a first introduction to the design of digital circuits and computer architecture. It covers technical foundations of how a computing platform is designed from the bottom up. It introduces various execution paradigms, hardware description languages, and principles in digital design and computer architecture.

Objective

This class provides a first approach to Computer Architecture. The students learn the design of digital circuits in order to: - understand the basics, - understand the principles (of design), - understand the precedents (in computer architecture). Based on such understanding, the students are expected to: - learn how a modern computer works underneath, from the bottom up, - evaluate tradeoffs of different designs and ideas, - implement a principled design (a simple microprocessor), - learn to systematically debug increasingly complex systems, - hopefully be prepared to develop novel, out-of-the-box designs. The focus is on basics, principles, precedents, and how to use them to create/implement good designs.

Content

The class consists of the following major blocks of contents: - Major Current Issues in Computer Architecture: Principles, Mysteries, Motivational Case Studies and Examples - Digital Logic Design: Combinational Logic, Sequential Logic, Hardware Description Languages, FPGAs, Timing and Verification. - Basics of Computer Architecture: Von Neumann Model of Computing, Instruction Set Architecture, Assembly Programming, Microarchitecture, Microprogramming. - Basics of Processor Design: Pipelining, Out-of-Order Execution, Branch Prediction. - Execution Paradigms: Out-of-order Execution, Dataflow, Superscalar Execution, VLIW, Decoupled Access/Execute, SIMD Processors, GPUs, Systolic Arrays, Multithreading. - Memory System: Memory Organization, Memory Technologies, Memory Hierarchy, Caches, Prefetching, Virtual Memory.

Resources