CMSC 411 Section 101

Syllabus

1. Processor Design

• Information representation. Tags. Check bits.
  
• Number formats. Floating-point numbers. IEEE 754 standard.
  
• Instruction sets. Addressing modes. RISC vs. CISC.
  
• Fixed-point addition and subtraction. Unsigned and signed multiplication.
  
• Division. ALU design. Bit slicing.
  
• Floating-point arithmetic. Arithmetic processors.
  

2. Control Design

• Instruction sequencing. Stack control.
  
• Hardwired control.
  
• Microprogrammed control. AMD 2909. Microinstruction types. Horizontal vs. vertical microcode.
  
• Microprogram optimization. Width optimization. Microcode compaction.
  
• Microprogrammed computers. Nanoprogramming. Nanodata QM1.
  

3. Memory Organization

• Memory technologies. RAM design. Memory hierarchies.
  
• Performance evaluation. Hit ratio.
  
• Cache memories. VAX-11/780 cache. Associative memories and processors.
  
• Interleaved memories.
  

4. System Organization

• Communication methods. Bus control and timing. Multibus (IEEE 796) bus.
  
• Input-output. Programmed I/O.
  
• Interrupts and DMA. I/O processors. Intel 8089.
  

5. Parallel Processors

• Processor classification. Performance measurement.
  
• Vector processors.
  
• Instruction and arithmetic pipelines.
  
• Multiprocessors. Shared vs. distributed memory.
  
• Interconnection networks.
  
• Hypercube computers.