Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE690: Computer Systems Architecture

Description: This course deals with the design and performance evaluation of advanced/high-performance computer systems. The emphasis is on microprocessors, chip-multiprocessors and memory hierarchy design. Historical information is presented as well along with data storage and low-power dissipation schemes. Special attention is paid to pipelining, ILP (instruction-level parallelism), DLP (data-level parallelism) and TLP (thread-level parallelism) using HW (hardware) and/or SW (software) techniques to yield high performance.

Prerequisites: Undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering, or ECE 684 or equivalent.

Textbook: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, by J.L. Hennessy and D.A. Patterson, Morgan Kaufmann, 4^th edition, 2007.

Additional notes:

· S.G. Ziavras, "History of Computation (full PDF)," The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Developed under the Auspices of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), Eolss Publishers, Oxford, United Kingdom, Theme 6.45: Computer Science and Engineering, 2002 . Also available at http:// www.eolss.net, 2004.

· S.G. Ziavras, "Computer Systems (full PDF)," The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Developed under the Auspices of UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford, United Kingdom, Theme 6.45: Computer Science and Engineering, 2002. Also available at http:// www.eolss.net, 2004.   

Lecture notes and other references: http://www.njit.edu/~ziavras/classes.htm

COURSE OUTLINE

Week	Chapter
1	1 & Appendix B
2	1 & Appendix B
3	Appendix B
4	Appendix A
5	Appendix A
6	2
7	2
8	Midterm exam
9	2, 3
10	3
11	4
12	4
13	5 & Appendix C
14	5 & Appendix C
15	Final exam

Grading Policy: Midterm exam: 35%

Project: 30%,

Final exam: 35%

The NJIT Honor Code will be upheld. Any violations will be brought to the immediate attention of the Dean of Students.