Objectives

At the end of the course, students should know: how computers work; how to evaluation their performance; the instruction set architecture of a typical modern RISC processor; MIPS and ARM processor architectures; relationship between hardware and software; memory interface and hierarchy; computer interfacing.

Contents

• Introduction: overview; performance.
• Instructions: formats, representations, interface with software.
• Arithmetic: number representation; hardware for arithmetic operations; Arithmetic Logic Unit.
• Datapath and control unit: single-cycle and multiple-cycle implementations; microprogramming; exception handling.
• Memory hierarchy: caches, virtual memory.
• Pipelining: pipelined datapaths, data and branch hazards, exceptions.
• MIPS and ARM processor architectures.

• Course textbook: ARM System-on-Chip Architecture, 2nd Ed., Steve Furber, 2000 (around £30)
• Course textbook: Computer Organization and Architecture (5th edition) by William Stallings
• Course textbook: Computer Organization and Design (Second Edition) by D.A. Patterson and J.L. Hennessy, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1998, ISBN 1-55860-491-X
• corrections: see errata
• background material not covered by course: Chapter 1 and Appendix B of textbook
• material covered by course selected from: Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and Appendix C of textbook

Autumn Term - Computer Architectures & Systems
Lecture 1  Introduction to Computer Architecture & Systems
Lecture 2  Number Systems  ....................................
Lecture 3  A Very Simple Processor .......................
Lecture 4  Introduction to the ARM processor ........ 
Lecture 5  Assembly Language Programming .........  
Lecture 6  More Assembly Language Programming  
Lecture 7  Stacks and Subroutines
Lecture 8  ARM Processor Organisation
Lecture 9  ARM Instruction Set Architecture
Lecture 10 Cache Memory
Lecture 11 Exceptions and Interrupts
Lecture 12 System Buses

Problem Sheets 1 to 6 with Solutions

Lab 1 Learning ARM SDT (System Call Summary, PFE editor)

Assessed Assignment & Notes on Bubble Sort   & Data file (turing.txt)

MATLAB Resource Page (Lecture notes and assignments)

2000 Exam & Solution
2001 Exam & Solution

Useful ARM Documents (They are very long!)
ARM instruction set Quick Reference Card (3 pages)
ARM Programming Techniques - Tells you all about how to program ARM processor (258 pages)
ARM Reference Manual for Software Development Kit (v2.02) and (v2.2) (both around 4Mbytes)
ARM Windows User's Manual for version 2.02 (1Mbytes) and version 2.2 (9.6Mbytes)
ARM SDK version 2.02u (for student use only, you must register this with ARM)

Useful links

• An excellent online tutorial on Number Systems
• A link about ARM assembly language
• ARM Education - SDT version 2.02
• The best student support site I know for computing
• A good cite on CPU and RAM.
• the future of microprocessor, Pentium II factsheet, GHz microprocesor, GHz FPGA, million gate FPGA, IRAM SPEC
• information from textbook publisher
• Composing Good HTML, W3C's style guide for online hypertext, Introduction to HTML, How to Write HTML Files, The HTML Quick Reference Guide, A Beginner's Guide to HTML