This is a first course in Computer Architecture.
The course is taught over 12 weeks with 2 lectures per week. There are also six 2-hour laboratory sessions.
The University's formal description of this module can be found by clicking here.
This module is offered to second year Computer Science (CK401) students at University College Cork.
The final mark for this course is a combination of a year's work mark and a mark obtained from a written end-of-year examination.
Laboratory work is worth 20% of the overall mark for this subject. The other 80% is associated with a written paper, which you must answer within a 1.5-hour interval.
The essential text for this course is
Tanenbaum, A and Austin, T, Structured Computer Organization , 6th edition, published by Pearson.
The lectures will be held during term in the Western Gateway Building (old Cork Greyhound Track), on Mondays in WGBG02 at 10.00 a.m. and on Wednesdays in WGBG03 at 11.00 a.m.
The lectures closely follow the chapters of the essential class text. You are advised to consult additional material accessible from the Computer Architecture Resources page.
It is essential that you attend every lecture and take relevant notes. The overheads displayed to support the lecture are the property of the text publisher and cannot be supplied as handouts. As soon as possible after each lecture, you should go over your notes, make sure you understand them and add your own expanded observations on the notes.
CPU, ALU, registers, Accumulator, PC, SP, stack, main memory, secondary memory, instruction cycle, fetch phase, execute phase.
Revision of unsigned integer representations. Signed numbers: Signed-magnitude, Nine's Complement, Ten's Complement, One's complement, Two's Complement. Number conversions.
Fixed point, floating point, IEEE standard floating point representation. Conversions between binary and decimal numbers.
DC, resistance, resistor colour code and tolerances, Ohm's Law, series circuits, Kirchoff's Second Law, potential divider, Kirchoff's First Law, resistance in parallel circuits, series-parallel circuits, power in DC circuits.
AC, RMS, inductance, inductive rise time, time constant in an RL circuit, inductive reactance, phase angle, power in inductive circuits, power factor, capacitors, factors affecting capacitance, time constant, capacitive reactance, phase angle, power.
Resistance, resistivity, conductance, conductivity, semiconductor bonds, doping, acceptor doping, pn junction, potential barrier of pn junction, pn junction forward bias, pn junction reverse bias.
Bipolar Junction Transistor, pnp, npn, biasing, operating regions, common base, common emitter, cutoff, cut-in base voltage, saturation, collector current characteristics, switching, inversion, Field Effect Transistor, MOSFET, nMOS, pMOS, CMOS, FET operating regions, cutoff, triode region, pinchoff, drain current characteristics, switching, inversion.
Practical laboratory sessions are held in WGBG20 on the ground floor of the Western Gateway Building, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9.00 hours to 11.00 hours. You will be notified in class of the date of the first session.
Students are requested to attend only the session to which they have been assigned.
Sample examination papers can be found here:
| Sample Examination Paper 2010 | |||||