EE 4683/5683 is an online course in Spring 2024. The course administration will be different for students registered for this online course. In what follows, course implementation will be explained, so please read carefully.

Course Syllabus (PDF)

Course Information
Credits: 3
Days: Mondays
Time: 2:00 PM - 2:55 PM
Location: ARC 314
Webpage: http://oucsace.cs.ohio.edu/~avinashk/classes/ee468/ee468.htm

Course Instructor

Name: Avinash Karanth

Room: STKR 330/335

Phone: (740)-597-1481

E-mail: karanth@ohio.edu

Office Hours: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Monday, or by appointment.

Grading Assistant: Andy Wolff
Office: STKR 305
E-mail: aw415517@ohio.edu

Textbook

• (Required) Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach, John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, 5th Edition.
• (Optional) Computer Organization and Design - The Hardware/Software Interface, David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy, 3rd Edition.

Prerequisites

• EE 3613: Computer Organization 

Class Policies

• Covid Protocols: Please follow all Covid protocols mandated by Ohio University; Covid operations information is available: https://www.ohio.edu/coronavirus/covid-operations. Reports of COVID and other upper respiratory illness are increasing across the state. Please do not to attend classes if you are ill or test positive for COVID. No documentation is needed, I request that you inform me.

• Accepted Absences: Students/you may be absent for up to three (3) days each academic semester, without penalty, to take time off for reasons of faith or religious or spiritual belief system or to participate in organized activities conducted under the auspices of a religious denomination, church, or other religious or spiritual organization. You are required to notify the me in writing of specific dates requested for alternative accommodations no later than fourteen (14) days after the first day of instruction. These requests will remain confidential. For more information about this policy, you may contact the Director and Title IX Coordinator, Equity and Civil Rights Compliance, Lindley Hall, 006, 740-593-9140, Equity@ohio.edu.

• Class Meeting: As this is an online class, there will be no regular meeting as all instructional screencasts, lecture notes and assignments will be posted online. However, for the convenience of the students (undergrads and grads), I will periodically meet with the students, every week on Mondays from 2-3 PM to discuss the critical issues with the class.
  

• Lectures: There are a total of 7 modules with multiple sub-parts covering computer architecture topic. Each module will be composed of lectures slides (PDFs) and instructional screencasts (voice-over powerpoint slides). These will be posted on a weekly basis and students will be notified via email. All lecture slides will be posted on the course website; the instructional screencasts will be available via blackboard. Each screencast will be 10 - 20 minutes and will be accompanied with powerpoint slides. Since this is an online course, it is up to you to keep up with the lessons, readings and assignments. This is critical since much of the material builds on itself and if you get a few weeks behind, it can be extremely difficult to catch up.

• Assignment Submission: All assignment submissions are due according to the due dates indicated in the course schedule. Periodically, I will send reminders when they become due. All assignments will be collected via blackboard.

• Exam Submission: For all students registered for the class, there will be in-person one-hour midterm exam and two-hour final.

• Make-Up Exam: Make-up exams will only be given to those with valid university absences such as illness (Covid, etc) or other absences noted above. In such cases, the student is requested to contact the instructor as soon as possible to schedule a make-up exam.

• Academic Misconduct: Any academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Unless otherwise specifically stated by your instructor, all course work should be done on your own. Please refer to the OU Student Code of Conduct.

• Regrades: All requests for regrades must be submitted in writing within one week of the distribution of the graded material.

• Late Homeworks: Late homework assignment will be accepted for a maximum of three days after the due date. For each day your assignment is late, 10% of the total possible points will be deducted from your score. Typically, homework assignments are due on Monday, and they will be graded with reduced points until the following Friday.
  

Undergraduate/Graduate Grading Policy

• Homeworks (4): 20%
• Midterm   (1):    25% 
• Final Exam   :    30% 
• Projects (2) :    25%

• Assignments are due via e-mail or through Blackboard on the date and time specified.

• All grades will be posted on Blackboard.

• All grading is based on the 12-point system. [100-93] A, [92-90] A-, [89-87] B+, [86-83] B, [82-80] B-, [79-77] C+, [76-73] C, [72-70] C-, [69-67] D+, [66-63] D, [62-60] D-, [59-..] F. Instructor reserves the right to lower the limits above, but I promise not to raise them.

• All exams will be in-class (midterm & final).

Course Outline

EE 4683/5683 is intended to provide undergraduate and graduate students with an in-depth study of digital systems and computer design. It provides a basic knowledge and ability required for understanding and designing computer systems. The important topics covered in this class include cache and main memory concepts, virtual memory, multi-level caches, I/O devices, multiprocessor networks, snoopy and directory cache coherence. Graduate students are expected to complete a term-paper. The topics covered in this course are as follows:

• Performance Trade-offs for Multicores
• Advanced Pipelining: Superscalar and VLIW
• Instruction Level Parallelism: Static and Dynamic Scheduling
• Limits to ILP: Multithreading and Multicores
• Memory Hierarchy and Multi-Level Caching
• I/O Fundamentals and Techniques
• Shared Memory Multiprocessing
• Interconnection Networks & Clusters

Tools

• WinMIPS64 - MIPS64 instruction set simulator for Windows
• Dinero - Cache simulator runs on Unix, linux or Cygwin

Tentative Dates

• Midterm Exam: Monday, March 4, 2024
  
• Final Exam: Monday, April 29, 2024