Objectives

This course presents a combined introduction to the concepts of computer architecture and operating systems. In particlar, we will discuss the following topics:

• Digital logic and digital systems: Fundamental building blocks; logic expressions, minimization, sum of product forms
• Machine level representation of data: Bits, bytes, and words; numeric data representation and number bases; fixed- and floating-point systems; signed and twos-complement representations; representation of nonnumeric data; representation of records and arrays
• Assembly level machine organization: Basic organization of the von Neumann machine; control unit; instruction fetch, decode, and execution; instruction sets and types; assembly/machine language programming; instruction formats; addressing modes; subroutine call and return mechanisms; I/O and interrupts
• Memory system organization and architecture: Storage systems and their technology; coding, data compression, and data integrity; memory hierarchy; main memory organization and operations; latency, cycle time, bandwidth, and interleaving; cache memories; virtual memory; fault handling and reliability
• Functional organization: Implementation of simple datapaths; control unit; instruction pipelining; introduction to instruction-level parallelism
• Overview of operating systems: Role and purpose of the operating system; history of operating system development; functionality of a typical operating system; design issues; influences of security
• Operating system principles: Structuring methods; abstractions, processes, and resources; concepts of application program interfaces; applications needs and the evolution of hardware/software techniques; device organization; interrupts; concept of user/system state and protection, transition to kernel mode
• Concurrency: dispatching and context switching; the role of interrupts; concurrent execution; the "mutual exclusion" problem and some solutions
• Scheduling and dispatch: Preemptive and nonpreemptive scheduling; schedulers and policies; processes and threads
• Memory management: Review of physical memory and memory management hardware; overlays, swapping, and partitions; paging and segmentation; placement and replacement policies; working sets and thrashing; caching

Prerequisites: CPSC 220

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to adhere to the Academic Integrity policies of Roanoke College. All work submitted for a grade is to be strictly the work of the student unless otherwise specified by the instructor. The policies as outlined in the Academic Integrity handbook will be enforced in the course.

Graded programs are subject to the Roanoke College Academic Integrity policies. Copying a program or a portion of a program (even a single line) or reading another person's program to obtain ideas for solving a problem is plagiarism. Other examples of integrity violation include writing code for someone else, using code written by someone else, telling someone else how to solve a problem or having someone tell you how to solve a problem (and using their method). These cases apply to any work that is handed in for a grade under the instructor's assumption that the work is your own. Unless specified otherwise by the instructor, discussion among students should be limited to general discussion of concepts and language details, not specific aspects of a solution to the assigned problem.

Class Attendance

Regular attendance is highly recommended. Regardless of attendance, students are responsible for all material covered or assigned in class.

Mechanics

There will be three one-hour tests (Sept. 25, Oct. 23, and Nov. 20) in class. Make-up tests will be available by pre-arrangement only in case of scheduling conflicts. After the test, make-ups will be available only in case of documented medical emergency. Besides the tests, there will be regular homework assignments and projects.

Programming projects: The projects will be standalone programs and/or programs written in an assembly language. Each student is expected to work on his/her project independently. Projects will be graded on correctness, style and documentation. Projects are due by 5:00pm on the assigned date. Late projects will be penalized 10% per day, and will not be accepted more than three days late.

Grading

The final grade will be computed based on the grades in the tests, home works, quizzes and projects according to the following weights.

The grading scale is as follows: