CS 450 is intended to provide the student with an appreciation of modern computer design and its relation to system architecture, compiler technology and operating system functionality. The course places an emphasis on design based on the measurement of performance and its dependency on parallelism, efficiency, latency and resource utilization.

CS 650 is a grad course cross-listed with CS 450. Students enrolled in CS 650 will be assigned additional work such as a literature review (15 pages 1.5 spacing) and possibly a 25 minute presentation near the end of term. A list of suggested topics will be made available around week 7 of the course.

Office Hours

• Instructor's: by appointment
• TA Sukanta's: Monday 1:00-2:00

• Fundamentals of Processor Design
  Instruction set processor design, performance, instruction-level parallelism
• Pipelining Basics
  Ideal pipeline, balancing, hazards.
• Superscalar Design
  Superscalar pipeline, dynamic scheduling, static and dynamic branch prediction, precise exceptions, speculative execution.
• Memory
  Virtual memory, ordering memory accesses, non-blocking caches, pre-fetching.
• Thread-level and Data-Level Parallelism
  Flynn's classification, cache coherency, sequential consistency, multithreading, symmetric multiprocessing.

Textbooks are optional - for reference only.

• Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 5th edition, John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, Morgan Kaufmann, 2012 ( BookLook )
• Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar Processors, 1st edition, John Paul Shen and Mikko H. Lipasti, McGraw-Hill, 2005
  • on 3-hour loan at Davis Center reserve desk: call# UWD 1576

• Late assignments will lose 50% per week day.
• Late projects will lose 25% per week day.
• Assignments or projects not handed in at all will get a grade of 0.
• Assignment and test regrading requests must be made within two weeks of return.
• Assignments and tests will be returned at the end of classes or during TA office hours.
• Assignments and tests not picked up will be shredded one month after the end of term.

Discussion of assignments with classmates is allowed (i.e. how to approach the problem) but solutions must be done individually. A good rule of thumb to use is that when discussing assignments with others leave your pencil and paper at home.

For students in CS 650, the above grading scheme will constitute 80% of the course mark and the additional work (lit review) will constitute the remaining 20% of the course grade.

uw.cs.cs450 We'll use this newsgroup for discussing assignments and the project. You can read it via groups.google.com/group/uw.cs.cs450/, or with your preferred news reader. There are instructions for on- and off-campus access at www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~isg/coursework/newsgroups/software_setup.

Academic Integrity

In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Check the Office of Academic Integrity's website for more information.

All members of the UW community are expected to hold to the highest standard of academic integrity in their studies, teaching, and research. This site explains why academic integrity is important and how students can avoid academic misconduct. It also identifies resources available on campus for students and faculty to help achieve academic integrity in — and out — of the classroom.

Grievance

A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 — Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4. When in doubt please be certain to contact the department's administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.

Discipline

A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offenses, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offense, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offenses (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about "rules" for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Associate Dean. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71 — Student Discipline. For typical penalties, check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties.

Avoiding Academic Offenses

Most students are unaware of the line between acceptable and unacceptable academic behaviour, especially when discussing assignments with classmates and using the work of other students. For information on commonly misunderstood academic offenses and how to avoid them, students should refer to the Faculty of Mathematics Cheating and Student Academic Discipline Policy.

Appeals

A decision made or a penalty imposed under Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71, Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72 — Student Appeals.

Note for students with disabilities

The Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD), located in Needles Hall, Room 1132, collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the OPD at the beginning of each academic term.