Computer Architecture
Public syllabus for 2025-2026
Academic overview
Teaching team
Learning time distribution
| Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum | Lecture | Practice | Total Weekly | Lecture | Practice | |
| 56 | 28 | 28 | 4 | 2 | 2 | |
| Exam hours | ||||||
| 2 | ||||||
| Individual Study | Bibliography study | Field study | Homework | Tutoring | Others | |
| 69 | 14 | 25 | 25 | 3 | 0 | |
| Overall | ||||||
| 125 |
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
- This course aims to introduce freshman to the challenges, solutions, and alternatives offered by various architecture and design decisions that shaped the history of computing:
- understand the basics,
- understand the principles (of design),
- understand the precedents (in computer architecture).
Skills
- Knowledge objective (KO): (1) understand of von Neuman architecture components and their interactions; (2) familiarity to various abstraction levels from low-level hardware to application-level software; (3) basic understanding Information technology future hardware trends; (4) learn how a modern computer works underneath, from the bottom up.
- Ability objectives (AO): (1) evaluate trade offs of different designs and ideas; (2) understand processor micro-architecture and pipelining; (3) evaluate cache and virtual memory organizations; (4) learn to systematically debug increasingly complex systems; (5) evaluate memory models (7) use parallel computers.
- Skill objectives (SK): (1) evaluate and/or assemble a desktop computer within a performance budget (2) learn how a modern computer works underneath, from the bottom up (3) participate in Binay explotaion
Responsibility
- Students are encouraged to utilize any online or offline resources to supplement their learning and complete the weekly challenges. However, all external sources must be validated with a course tutor to ensure their validity
Online platform
Course content
| Content | Methods | Obs |
|---|---|---|
| C1. Introduction & Logistics (2h) | Lecture, discussions, active student participation | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C2. History of computing and Computer Architecture (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C3. Combinatorial Logic (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C4. Sequential Logic (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C5. Von Neumann Model, ISA, LC-3 and MIPS (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C6. Instruction Set Architecture (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C7. Midterm | In person exam | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C8. Microarchitecture (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C9. Memory Organization, Technology, Hierarchy (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C10. Caches (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C11. Virtual Memory (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C12. SIMD Architectures (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C13. GPU Architectures (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
| C14. GPU Architectures 2 (2h) | Same as above | Every Tu@1:00PM in A02 amphitheater and/or on meet.google |
Course bibliography
Digital Design and Computer Architecture (ETH Zürich, Spring 2025 - YouTube) Computerphile (YouTube channel) Crash Course: Computer Science (YouTube channel) David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy -- Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware Software Interface [RISC-V Edition] Andrew Tanenbaum , Todd Austin -- Structured Computer Organization [6th Edition]
Seminar content
| Content | Methods | Obs |
|---|---|---|
| L1-13 (28h) Complementary discussions to the lectures. Homework assessments.Open questions and comments from students. | Active participation, discussions, self-conducted practical work | All solutions must must be submitted to classroom.google.com in order to receive full creditUse classroom.google private and public messaging to interact with Teaching Assistants 24/7 New homeworks posted on ctf.info.uvt.ro every week |
| Bibliography and tools: NetCat runs a script on the server that reads whatever you send it and responds. Your job is to open a TCP connection to that server, send the right input, and read the response (the flag). We use netcat (nc) for that because it lets you open a raw connection to a host and port and send/receive bytes easily. What is an host and a port: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/difference-between-ip-address-and-port-number/ If you want a gentle introduction and more nc/ncat options, see:https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/introduction-to-netcat/ How to install netcat: https://serverspace.io/support/help/how-to-install-ncat-tool-on_windows-and-linux/ Bits , encodings and operations: https://www.w3schools.com/programming/prog_bits_and_bytes.php https://www.w3schools.com/programming/prog_binary_numbers.php https://www.w3schools.com/programming/prog_hexadecimal_numbers.php Bitwise ops in Python: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python/python-bitwise-operators/ Formating to binary: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/699866/convert-int-to-binary-string-in-python Formating to hex: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5661725/format-ints-into-string-of-hex To automate: pwntools (install): https://pypi.org/project/pwntools/ pwntools docs: https://docs.pwntools.com/en/stable/intro.html Python sockets / tutorials: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python/sockets-python/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python/socket-programming-python/ pwntools installation: https://pypi.org/project/pwntools/ virtualbox installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjG1yG2l9v0 |
Seminar bibliography
This is a basic course in computer science programs all around the world. Questions from this course appear both in the graduation exam, as well as in hiring interviews.The cyber security challenges that students are exposed to are a great way to explore the system's vulnerabilities and understand basic system security.
Corroboration
(none)
AI tools guidance
Evaluation and delivery
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Performance standards
Minimal knowledge for passing this subject: Ability to converse with any IT professional about [some] performance tradeoffs in computer architecture design The final grade is computed as a weighted average of grades obtained for components described in 10.4 and 10.5.
Additional info
(none)