Design of Computer Systems

• 39 hrs lectures
• 12 hrs exercises
• 14 hrs projects

• 52 pts final exam (written part)
• 15 pts mid-term test (written part)
• 33 pts projects

To give the students knowledge of organization and functioning of a (single core) processor, in particular, the principles of the operation, memory and control units, the algorithms with fixed and floating point number systems, the subsystem communication level, and integration of the processor to a parallel system.

After completing this course, students will be able to describe the functionality of the computation, memory and control units, and their communication in a digital computer. They will be familiar with the basics of VHDL. They will understand the development trends and limitations of computer technology.

This course is essential to all engineers working in the areas of computer engineering and computer science as it explains how computers work and how they are built at the hardware level. Understanding the principles of, for example, arithmetic operations conducted in fixed point and floating point number representations, instruction execution in pipelines or memory hierarchy will allow the practitioners to develop better hardware and software. Writing high-quality code is impossible without understanding the computer organization principles.

• Digital Systems Design (INC)
• Machine Level Programming (ISU)

• Hamacher, C., Vranesic, Z., Zaky, S., N. Manjikian: Computer Organization and Embedded Systems, 6th edition, McGraw Hill, 2012, ISBN-13: 978-0-07-338065-0
• Hennessy J. L., Patterson D. A.: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 2nd edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publ., 1996, and new editions, e.g. the 5th ed. from 2012.

1. Introduction, processor and its organization.
2. Instruction sets, register structures.
3. Pipelining in processors.
4. Data representation.
5. Algorithms of fixed-point operations.
6. Algorithms of floating point operations, iterative algorithms.
7. Controllers.
8. Memory.
9. Cache memory.
10. Buses, peripheral interfacing and control.
11. Computer performance and performance evaluation.
12. Reliability of computer systems.
13. Introduction to parallel architectures.

1. VHDL - introduction
2. VHDL - synthesizable code
3. FPGA
4. Processor in VHDL
5. Huffman code, Hamming code
6. Modular arithmetic, adders
7. Multipliers
8. Division
9. Iterative algorithms
10. Performance evaluation, reliability
11. Parallel Architectures

• Two projects will be assigned during the semester.

Exam prerequisites: For receiving the credit and thus for entering the exam, students have to get at least 20 points during the semester. Plagiarism and not allowed cooperation will cause that involved students are not classified and disciplinary action can be initiated.
Within this course, attendance on the lectures and demonstrations is not monitored. The knowledge of students is examined by the projects, the mid-term exam and by the final exam. The minimal number of points which can be obtained from the final exam is 20. Otherwise, no points will be assigned to a student. In the case of a reported barrier preventing the student to perform the scheduled activity, the guarantor can allow the student to perform this activity on an alternative date.

For receiving the credit and thus for entering the exam, students have to get at least 20 points during the semester.

Plagiarism and not allowed cooperation will cause that involved students are not classified and disciplinary action can be initiated.