Computer Organization
TextBook
W. Stallings, Computer Organization and Architecture (7th Ed), Prentice Hall, 2006.
Delivery Plan
Schedule of topics
Marks Distribution
Quizzes - 10%
Assignments (2) - 10%
Mid Semester Exam - 20%
4. Assembly Practical Exam - 10%
End Semester Exam - 50%
The working knowledge of professionals is almost universally considered intrinsically informal, hence unteachable except by experience. If we express working knowledge formally, in computational terms, we can manipulate it, reflect on it, and transmit it more effectively.
- Learning Aims
- Assignment
- Past Exam
- Rustaq
The main aim of the course SFDV2005 Introduction to Computer organization is to teach the fundamentals of computer architecture. Students will develop an understanding of the structure of computers and how the computers execute programs. This course will help:
- To extend students’ knowledge of computer hardware and software especially the understanding of the basic principles of computing.
- To provide students with an appreciation of low level programming skills.
- To provide students with an understanding of computer architecture fundamentals and Computer Technology skills.
- Understanding the principal components of a typical computer and their interconnections.
Learning Outcome
On successful completion of SFDV2005 students will be able to:
- Explain how data representation is used with computer inputs.
- Explain circuits can be simplified using digital logic.
- Identify computer devices and there physical interconnections.
- Read/write an assembly program.
- Apply computer architecture skills to plug/unplug devices like RAM modules, extensions cards, hard disks etc.
- Apply I/O understanding to connect devices efficiently.
- Explain how to use knowledge of microprogramming and assembly to solve any problem that needs low level programming skills.
- Explain how digital logic integrates with and supports integrated circuit activities
- Use computer architecture skills in the hardware troubleshooting activities.
It is challenging to motivate students who mostly look at Computer Science from an application perspective to study computer organization and architecture concepts. We have developed a set of practical and theoretical assignments to encourage students to understand and appreciate computer organization and architecture concepts.
- Assignment 1
- Assignment 2 (Assembly Language)
You are responsible for submitting assignments when scheduled by the instructor. Absence from lecture does not excuse you from any assignments made during the lecture period. If you miss a lecture/Lab. check with the instructor or another student to determine if an assignment was given during the missed lecture/Lab. You are expected to address the assignments individually. You can help on an assignment, but may not copy any part of another student's work. Assignments found to be too much alike or copied will result in a ZERO grade for all parties involved. The instructor reserves the right to orally examine you on any assignment and modify the assignment grade accordingly. You are expected to take the exam on the scheduled date. If you must miss a scheduled exam, you are required to notify the instructor before hand and have a very good reason. Cheating of any kind will result in an F for the course. Sharing test information in any manner is cheating.
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
Al-Rustaq - Oman
Rustaq is an area of healing warm springs, the most notable being Ain al Kasafa. Its waters runs at 45°C and are regarded as a cure for rheumatism and skin diseases due to its sulphur content.
There are three popular wadis to visit: Wadi Bani Ghafar; Wadi al Sahtan and Wadi Bani Auf. In addition, the mountains are pitted with caves such as Al Sanaqha Cave with its own subterranean springs.
Modern computer architectural performance is often described as MIPS per MHz (millions of instructions per second per millions of cycles per second of clock speed). This metric explicitly measures the efficiency of the architecture at any clock speed. Since a faster clock can make a faster computer, this is a useful, widely applicable measurement. Historic complex instruction set computers had MIPs/MHz as low as 0.1 (See instructions per second). Simple modern processors easily reach near 1. Superscalar processors may reach three to five by executing several instructions per clock cycle. Multicore and vector processing CPUs can multiply this further by acting on a lot of data per instruction, and have several CPUs executing in parallel. Counting machine language instructions would be misleading because they can do varying amounts of work in different ISAs. The "instruction" in the standard measurements is not a count of the ISA's actual machine language instructions, but a historical unit of measurement, usually based on the speed of the VAX computer architecture. Historically, many people measured the speed by the clock rate (usually in MHz or GHz). This refers to the cycles per second of the main clock of the CPU. However, this metric is somewhat misleading, as a machine with a higher clock rate may not necessarily have higher performance. As a result manufacturers have moved away from clock speed as a measure of performance. Computer performance can also be measured with the amount of cache a processor has. If the speed, MHz or GHz, were to be a car then the cache is like the gas tank. No matter how fast the car goes, it will still need to get gas. The higher the speed, and the greater the cache, the faster a processor runs
