Instructor

• Kinga Dobolyi (kinga@cs.umd.edu)
• Stuart Fletcher (stuart@cs.umd.edu)

Office Hours

Kinga and Stuart hold office hours in AVW 1151, which is the TA room. Kinga's office hours are 12:30-2:30 on Tuesday and Thursdays. Stuart's office hours are 1-3 PM on Mondays and Fridays.

Dr. Preston's TA is Konstantinos Bitsakos, and he holds his hours 10:15-12:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Dr. Kruskal's TA is Anuradha Penmetcha, and she holds her hours 1-4 on Mondays.

These TAs are available for all courses. However, 311 TAs are better for project questions, which can also be emailed to the instructor.

    http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2002/cmsc311/

In addition to this webpage, Dr. Hugue has provided a large number of resources on her main CMSC 311 including old homeworks, exams, etc.

Visit Meesh's 311 Webpage

• Midterms: 30% each
• Final: 40%

Your final grade is also based on projects given throughout the semester.

Basically, two grades are computed.

Method 1

If you pass the primaries of the required projects (currently, Project 0 through Project 4 are "required"), plus possibly passing secondaries (this will be decided during the semester), you will receive a "check" indicating you have completed the minimum requirements of the projects.

You will have grades computed based on the percentages of exams given above.

Method 2

You will also be given points on the projects. Your grades will be based on your relative ranking with other students in the course. More than likely this means grading on some 100 point scale (or similar), and then determining letter grades for projects.

The project grades will then count as 20% of your grade. The scores are combined with exam grades (exams are scaled to 80%), and then your grade with projects are counted.

Also, if you receive an F using Method 1, then no matter what you do on projects, the best you can do is a D.

Solutions to text problems and additional HW problems are available on Dr. Hugue's CMSC 311 website.

Additional problems may be provided to help you prepare for exams.

In addition, you are expected to read the textbook. While many students find such a task painful (often because English is a second language), it is, nevertheless, an important skill to learn, and it's better to learn now than later.

• Project 0. Tokenizing project. Mostly to make projects 1 through 3 easier.
• Project 1. Number conversion, reading binary files, etc. Writing simulated registers.
• Project 2. MIPS project 1. Reading in a basic MIPS file, and determining addresses of data segment. Also, translation of some instructions from binary to MIPS.
• Project 3. MIPS project 2. Being able to simulate the actual instructions.
• Project 4. Writing a MIPS assembly language program which will run on the simulator you wrote.

Then, there is the optional projects.

• Project 5. MIPS project 3. Converting the assembly to binary format. Being able to read and write from a file. Loading the binary format into memory. Disassembler.
• Project 6. MIPS project 4. Simulation of hardware. (Unlikely to occur this semester).

The optional projects may make the project grade worth more than the 20%. They are likely to be graded independently of the other projects (for example, if it's worth 10% more, you will get a numeric grade for the 10%). Generally, if you get something working that looks reasonable, you will get a good grade on this section.

Makeups will only be given to students with valid documentation. If you are sick, you must have a doctor state dates of incapacitation. In particular, it must state (1) the date which you were incapacitated, (2) and that you were too sick to attend classes).

You must contact the instructor via email/phone as soon as possible. If the instructor is contacted over a week after the exam has been given, you may receive a 0 on the exam, for failing to contact the instructor in a timely manner.

Requests for regrades on an exam must be made IN WRITING within a week of the exam being handed back. If such a request is not made within a week, the instructor reserves the right not to regrade the exam.

Please carefully read and consider the Computer Science Department policy regarding the use of computer systems, and the Office of Information Technology's policy regarding acceptable use of computer accounts provided for instructional use, in the Spring 2002 issue of the departmental newsletter, CS Tid-Bits, handed out with this syllabus. Note in particular the penalties for impermissible cooperation on programming projects, which is a violation of the University's Code of Academic Integrity. Any evidence of unacceptable use of computer accounts or unauthorized cooperation on exams or projects will be submitted to the appropriate authorities or to the Student Honor Council, which could result in an XF for the course, suspension, or expulsion from the University.

NOTE SPECIFICALLY that projects are to be done INDIVIDUALLY, unless otherwise specified by your instructor IN WRITING TO ENTIRE CLASS (verbal assurances don't count). For academic honesty purposes, projects are to be considered comparable to an extended take-home exam. That is, any cooperation or exchange of ideas which would be prohibited on an exam is also prohibited on a project assignment. Working IN ANY WAY with another student will be considered a violation and WILL BE REPORTED to the Honor Council. Students may not discuss pseudocode, design of a program or of individual functions, coding of individual functions, or any high-level code with anyone except the instructors and teaching assistants. Should you have difficulty with a programming assignment you should see your instructor or the teaching assistants in office hours, NOT solicit help from anyone else in violation of these rules. Students are welcome to study together or to receive help in learning the course concepts from any others, but exams and projects are to be solely and entirely each student's own work.

VIOLATIONS OF ACADEMIC HONESTY INCLUDE:

1. failing to do all or any of the work on a project by yourself, other than assistance from the instructional staff.
2. using any ideas or any part of another student's project, or copying any other individual's work in any way.
3. giving any parts or ideas from your project, including test data, to another student.
4. having programs on an open account or on a PC that other students can access.
5. transferring any part of a project to or from another student or individual by any means, electronic or otherwise.
6. publishing any of your code publicly (e.g., via a webpage) which other students can access, even if the project has already been completed.

IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY, UNDER THE UNIVERSITY'S HONOR POLICY, OF ANY STUDENT WHO LEARNS OF AN INCIDENT OF ACADEMIC DISHONESTY TO REPORT IT TO THEIR INSTRUCTOR.

Also, for your benefit, you should indicate who your team member is early on. Thus, if you are a team member, and you change your mind, and break the team up, and there is similar code between you and a former team member, you will still be considered violating academic integrity.

You may also work individually on projects. For now, working individually does not confer any benefits. However, this may change, depending on the project description.

This list may vary according to the pace of lecture topics.

Overview (1 lecture)

• Introduction.
• General Overview of Computer Organization (CPU, Memory, Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle)

Number Represenation (5 lectures)

• What's a bit, byte, bitstring?
• Conversion to and from base 10 from arbitrary base.
• Binary, Octal, Hexadecimal
• Unsigned binary
• Signed decimal: 9's complement, 10's complement
• Signed binary: 1's complement, 2's complement, signed magnitude
• Binary Coded Decimal
• How many bitstrings given N bits?
• Range of numbers given N bits?
• Floating Point Representation
• Simple Addition/Subtraction

Combinational Logic (5 lectures)

• Gates and Identities
• Combinational Circuit Parts
  • MUX, DeMUX
  • Encoder, Decoder
  • Half Adder, Full Adder
  • Carry Lookahead Adder
  • Shifter (Rotator)
  • Design of ALU

Sequential Logic (5-7 lectures)

• D, JK, and T flip flops
• Sequential Circuit Parts
  • Registers
  • Synchronous, asynchronous counters
  • Register Files
• Design with finite state machines with output (Mealy/Moore)
• PLAs/ROMs used in design

Assembly Language

• MIPS assembly language
• Encoding of instructions in binary
• Basic MIPS architecture
• Translation of C program snippets to MIPS
• Addressing modes

Datapath and Control (4-5 lectures)

• How an assembly language instruction is executed
• Internal bus
• Control Units
• Register Transfer Language
• Microprogramming

Memory

• RAM
• Interleaved memory
• Cache
• Virtual Memory
• Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Random Topics

• Interrupts
• Bitwise operators in C
• Shift operators in C
• I/O devices

Pipelining (2 lectures)

• Basics of Pipelining
• Amdahl's Law (not really pipelining...)