Course Syllabus
1. Course number: CS 350C.
Course title: Advanced Computer Architecture.
2. Teaching Personnel
• Instructor: Siddhartha Chatterjee. Office location: GDC 6.502. Office hours: MW 09:00-
12:00, T 11:00-12:00, R 12:00-13:00 and by appointment.
• Teaching assistant: N/A.
3. Overview of class
• Prerequisites: CS 429.
• Subject matter: Relationships between programming and hardware design, high
performance microarchitectures, memory system design, technology and workload
constraints on design, special techniques for coding, addressing, and control, and
evaluation of design alternatives will be explored.
• Academic/learning goals: Thorough and deep understanding of the effects of individual
system components on program performance, and the end-to-end impact of these
components.
• How goals will be assessed: Programming assignments, midterm and final exams.
4. Grading policy
• Evaluation of class grades: Three programing assignments (50%); midterm exam (25%);
final exam (25%).
• The final letter grades will be assigned based on your total points out of 100 points. The
grade cutoffs are as follows: 0-59 = F; 60-69 = D; 70-79 = C; 80-89 = B; 90-100 = A. Plus
and minus grades (+ and -) will be assigned to scores within 2.5 points of the cutoffs. So,
for example, total points 87.5 to 89.9 earn a B+ and total points 90 to 92.4 earn an A-.
• Attendance will not be used in determining the course grade.
5. Major course requirements and assignments
• Programming assignment 1 (10%): Date TBD. Instruction set statistics measurement.
• Programming assignment 2 (20%): Date TBD. Implementation of memory subsystem in
Verilog.
• Programming assignment 3 (20%): Date TBD. Implementation of modern OOO processor
in Verilog.
• Midterm (25%): Date TBD.
• Final exam (20%): Date TBD. Comprehensive.
6. Materials
• Required textbook: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan
Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) 6th Edition, by John L. Hennessy
and David A. Patterson. ISBN-13: 978-0128119051, ISBN-10: 0128119055.
• Other readings of original papers will be uploaded to Canvas as required.
7. Final exam date and time: In class, on final day of classes.
8. Class website: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~sidchat/.
9. The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations
for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Division of Diversity
and Community Engagement (DDCE), Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 512-471-
6529 or at http://ddce.utexas.edu/disability.
