CS 208: Computer Organization & Architecture

Introduction to machine and assembly instruction sets via MIPS

[Read starting 1/5] Introduction to MIPS. Patterson & Hennessy, Chapter 2. Read starting now, and as needed for your homework.
[Read starting 1/5] Supplement section 2.4 of P&H with the Wikipedia entries about two's complement integers, hexadecimal integer representation, and octal integer representation. Read as you see fit. You need to be able to convert numbers between bases, and back and forth between two's complement and base ten.
[By class time, 1/7] Introducing MIPS and MARS. Nothing to hand in.
[Due 9:50 AM, 1/14] Implementing multiplication in MIPS. Submit your multiplication.asm file via Moodle.

The system stack and function calling. Digital logic intro.

[Due 11:55 PM, 1/21] Implementing function calling in MIPS. Submit your recursion.asm file via Moodle.
[Read by 1/19] Wikipedia's article on "call stack", and Patterson & Hennessy's Section 2.8 Supporting Procedures in Computer Hardware for background on how the system stack or call stack is used for function calling. If you find those discussions difficult, You can, of course, also search for system stack and call stack for more discussions (like this one, for example).
[Read by 1/28]: Patterson and Hennessy, B.1-5, B.7-9. Digital Logic.
[Due 9:50 AM, 1/28] A few digital logic problems.

Digital logic from gates to larval datapaths. Takehome exam.

Digital logic from gates to larval datapaths. Takehome exam.

[Due 9:50 AM, 2/16] Problems on byte order, floating point, and multiplication..
[Due 5:00 PM, 2/20] Some digital circuits.
[Start reading now] Chapter 4 of Patterson and Hennessy. We will be working on this chapter for weeks 6 and 7.
[Optional reading] A nice set of guard/round/sticky-bit examples

Datapaths. Pipelining. Memory hierarchies.

Winter 2015