CET 4333 -- Computer Organization and Design
Term: Spring 2007

Professor: Roy B. Levow (http://www.cse.fau.edu/~roy)

Class Time:  Tuesday/Thursday 5:00 - 6:20 pm
Room: LA-139 (Davie), JU-319 (Port St. Lucie)


Textbook: Computer Systems Design and Architecture, 2ed, Vincent P. Huering and Harry F. Jordan, Pearson / Prentice Hall, 2004, ISBN 0-13-048448-7
    Course materials are available at ftp://schof.colorado.edu/pub/CSDA

Click here for general information on course policies including program submission, late penalties, getting help, etc.

Course Format

The course will make use of Blackboard to supplement traditional lectures.  There will be a combination of written assignments, on-line quizzes, and in-class tests.  All will be announced in advance.  It is important to regularly check this web site for updates.

Communication

All course email communication will be done using your fau.edu email address.  You need to monitor email to that account regularly throughout the term or you may miss important course announcements.  You may send email to me from another account, but if you do you must set the reply-to field to your FAU email account if the message concerns grading or evaluation in any way.  You must also include your name in all messages concerning the course.
If you have your FAU email forwarded to an AOL or other email account, read this important notice concerning blocking of FAU email.

Prerequisites and Objectives

The catalog description, prerequisites, and course objectives can be viewed here.

Lecture Topics, Reading Assignments, and Exam Schedule (details to follow)

  1. Introduction:  The General Purpose Machine (ch1) {#1: intro, 1-16; #2: 17-37, 44-45}
  2. Machines & Machine Languages (ch2) {#3: 1-14; #4: 15-27; #5: 27-46; #6: 46-64, 78-81}
  3. Some Real Machines (ch3)
  4. Intel x86 and IA64 Architectures (X86 generations, Hyper-threading, Core 2, X86 instructions, Intel references)
  5. Computer Arithmetic and the Arithmetic Unit (ch6)
  6. Memory (ch7) (Cache) (RAM)
  7. Peripheral Devices (ch9) (PATA/IDE) (SATA) (RAID) (Video Card, GPU) (NAS, SAN)

Assignments

  1. Exercises 2.7, 2.8 (indicate movement for each instruction), 2.14 (list original formats in each new group), 2.20, 2.23.  Due Jan. 30.
  2. Web Research Problems  (In each case, answer the question by fully specifying the item that best meets the specified criterion and provide a link to the source on the web.)
    1. What is the least expensive Vista ready PC based on list price?
    2. What is the most expensive PC based on list price, base configuration?
    3. What is the fastest PC CPU currently available?  What measure of speed did you use?  What is its list price?
    4. How fast is the fastest PC memory currently available?  What measure of speed did you use?  What is its list price?
    5. How big is the bigest capacity (GB) PC hard drive?  What is its list price?
    6. What is the cheapest PC hard drive?  Use cost per GB as your measure.
  3.  More to follow.

Grading

Homework 20%, Quizzes 10%, 2 Exams 20% each, Final Exam 30%.