SCS1105 Computer Organization and Architecture

The students shall get an understanding of the logical architecture of a computer and the connection between high-level, low-level and machine programming language. Furthermore, the course will introduce the fundamental concepts of digital electronics. The course gives an introduction to architecture and organization of computers, both functional and physical components. Further aspects are: digital logic, bus-systems, coding, number systems and arithmetic, intern and extern memories, I/O-systems, CPU-organization, control-unit, RISC/CICS, parallel processing; Memory and Memory Management, Files Systems, Interfaces, Communication, Assembly programming.

Course Objectives

• To grasp the basic concepts of computer architecture and organization
• To understand the key skills of constructing cost-effective computer systems. 
• To learn how to quantitatively evaluate different designs and organizations, and provide quantitative arguments in evaluating different designs. 
• A student should be able to articulate design issues in the development of processor or other components that satisfy design requirements and objectives.

Course Outcomes
The student will be able to:

• Understand the impact of instruction set architecture on cost-performance of computer design.
• Understand ways to take advantage of instruction level parallelism for high performance
• processor design
• Understand alternatives in cache design and their impacts on cost/performance. 
• Understand contemporary microprocessor designs and identify various design techniques
• employed. 
• Design an interconnection networks and multiprocessors. 
• Understand the design process of a computer and critical elements in each step. 
• Understand memory hierarchy and its impact on computer cost/performance. 
• Use a set of hardware simulators to model a complex processor at the behavioral level.