Computer Organization, Fall 2020

General Course Information

Instructor:  Prof. Gennady Pekhimenko
Teaching Assistant:  Anand Jayarajan, Qinogsi Wu, Bojian Zheng, Mustafa Quraish
Discussion Board:  https://piazza.com/utoronto.ca/fall2020/cscb58/home
MarkUs Page:  http://markus.utsc.utoronto.ca/cscb58f20
Quercus:  https://q.utoronto.ca/courses/172020
Zoom Links: 
LEC https://vectorinstitute.zoom.us/j/93537472871 (password: 597255)
PRA (Mon) https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/94009704386 (password: 708254)
PRA (Tue) https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/95205933572 (password: 045630)
PRA (Thu) https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/94993998484 (password: 713436)
Syllabus: [PDF]

Course Description

The goal of this course is to understand and design the underlying architecture (digital structures) of computer systems. Specifically students will learn about the binary data representation and manipulation, boolean logic, components of computer systems, memory technology, peripherals, structure of a CPU, assembly languages, instruction execution, and addressing techniques. There are a number of laboratory periods in which students conduct experiments to build digital logic circuits on simulators.

Course Work and Grading

Labs 50% A major focus of this course is the laboratory exercises. There will be 10 practicals (labs). The mark for each lab is given according to attendance and required demonstrations of results. Each lab is worth 5% of the final grade. Some of the labs require the online submission (MarkUs) of a prelab report with a deadline before the corresponding lab starts. Each prelab report is worth ~3% of the final grade (included in the 5% grade of each lab).
Quizzes 10% Weekly online quizzes will be worth 10% in total. The quizzes will be made available on Quercus after each week's lectures and can be answered until 10 PM on the following Sunday.
Project 15% There will be an assembly programming project that is due on the last day of the class.
Final Exam 25% Final exam will be conducted on Quercus.