Computing Systems

Objectives

When successfully ends this CU each student should demonstrate that acquired the following knowledge, capacities and skills, being able:

  • to recognize the computer organization and its functional structure;
  • to acquire skills to follow the evolution of the computing systems organization;
  • to recognize the main features of an instruction set architecture (ISA);
  • to analyse the functionality of imperative programs (C-type), using assembly and machine language;
  • to apply techniques that may impact the performance of code execution;
  • to use tools to efficiently compile HLL programs (in Unix/Linux);
  • to analyse low-level code of compiled programs;
  • to develop soft skills, namely the reasoning capacity to solve problems and the oral and written communication skill.

Program

  1. Structure and organization of a computer Typical organization of a computer; data representation (text, images, processor instructions); binary representation of integers and real values (inc. IEEE 754 standard). Internal structure of a computer; instruction execution; abstraction levels; program execution in a lab environment (x86 on Linux).
  2. The instruction set architecture (ISA) Structure of an ISA: operations/operands, data access, instruction types and formats, a processor programming model. The Linux x86 ISA level: arithmetic operations, operands access, control structures in C, functions/procedures. Comparative analysis with IA-32 at the instruction set level: RISC (MIPS and ARM) and Intel 64.
  3. Performance evaluation Methodology for performance evaluation. Factors in the architecture that impacts performance: ILP and pipeline organization; memory hierarchy organization (focus on cache); extensions for vector computing; multiple processing cores into a single device.

Bibliography

Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective (CS:APP), Randal Bryant and David O’Hallaron, Pearson, 3rd Ed., 2015 Computer Organization and Design: the hardware/software interface, D.Patterson, J.Henessy, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 4th Ed., 2011

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