tamir@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/02/87)
I would like to get feedback from people on textbooks used
for an intermediate computer architecture course.
This is the first graduate course in computer architecture.
It is a prerequisite to all other graduate course in architecture.
Some advanced undergraduate students take it as well.
The prerequisites for the course include a minimum of one
quarter of digital circuits (gates, sequential circuits, etc) and
one quarter introductory computer architecture course
(the basic structure of a CPU, instruction set design,
memory, I/O, etc). Some general background in operatings systems
and compilers is also assumed.
The intermediate course covers some basic ideas in parallel and
pipelined computers (vector and array computers, multiprocessors,
multicomputers, dataflow machines, processors with multiple
functional units, design of pipelined processors, etc),
memory system design (virtual memory, caches, etc),
instructions set design (RISCs, HLL instruction sets,
support for OS functions, etc),
introduction to computer arithmetic (speedup techniques
for ALUs, floating point formats and operations, etc).
This is not a research course. The purpose is to give
students a good background in the basic issues in architecture.
More advanced courses focus on only one topic and
are more research oriented.
I would like to get feedback from instructors and graduate students
on the textbooks they use (or have used) in a similar course.
Please indicate the school, the prerequisites for the course,
the courses that follow it, etc.
The provide a short evaluation of the textbook used in the course.
Please send me mail rather than post your reply.
If I get any useful replies, I will summarize them in comp.edu.
Yuval Tamir
Internet: tamir@cs.ucla.edu
UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf,trwspp,randvax,ism780}!ucla-cs!tamir