CSCI 4121

The course will focus on the basic principles of computer architecture with an emphasis on quantitative analysis of the effect of architectural design decisions on system performance and the price/performance trade-offs necessary in real computer design. This includes instruction set design issues (CISC vs. RISC), instruction level parallelism, implementation methods, pipelining, pipeline hazards, interrupts, the relationship with compiler technology, and memory system design. Several representative architectures will be used as examples, with emphasis on modern RISC processors.