CISC 360: Computer Architecture

Catalog Description:
Principles and techniques used in the architecture of digital computers. Machine elements and their interrelation. Stack machines and other computer architectures.

Current Texts:
Computer Organization and Architecture: Designing for Performance
William Stallings
Prentice-Hall, 5th Edition

Goals:
CISC 360 relays an understanding of the principles and techniques employed in the architecture of digital computing systems. Computer organization is presented as a hierarchy including the true hardware at the bottom level, the conventional machine level, the operating system machine level, and the assembly language level. CISC 360 provides an overview of each level, with the exception of the operating system machine level, which is the subject matter of CISC 361.  Relationships between computer
systems design, operating systems, compilers and applications are discussed.

Content:

• System busses - internal and external
• Memory organization
• CPU Structure and functions
• External memory devices
• Addressing Modes and Instruction Sets
• Alternative architectures: pipeline, vector processors, stack machines
• Reduced Instruction Set Computers
• Parallel Processing
• Input-Output: programmed I/O, direct-memory-access (DMA), interrupts, synchronization
• Interconnection Networks
• Cluster Technology
• Performance measurement

Prerequisites:
CPEG 202 (Introduction to Computerl System Design) or CPEG 210,211
and minimum grade of C- in both CISC 260 (Machine Organization and Microcomputers) and CISC 220 (Data Structures) .