CS 2734 Computer Organization II

• Number systems and arithmetic:
  • Base conversion
  • Signed number representations and what they are used for.
  • Floating point number representation. (p. 572 1(a), 1(d), 2(b)).
  • Representation of information (p. 73 4 and 5).

• Programs:
  • Assembly process (p. 429 8)
  • Linking
  • Program executable layout
  • Static versus automatic variables

• Sparc assembly language:
  • Register windows
  • Parameter passing
  • Structure of stack
  • Signed versus unsigned branches
  • Status register

• Instruction set design:
  • Instruction encoding and decoding
  • Operands (p. 314 8)
  • Expanding opcodes (p. 313 4 and 5)

• Instruction cycle:
  • What is the flow of information during the instruction cycle.
  • Pipelining and Gantt charts
  • Interrupts (p. 316 28)
  • Clock cycles
  • Microcoded versus hardware control
  • Horizontal versus vertical microcode.

• I/O and Memory
  • Synchronous versus asynchronous buses (p. 158 23 and 25).
  • DMA (p. 316 29 and 30)
  • Synchronous versus asynchronous serial communication.

SKILL: The goal of the course is for you to understand what happens on all 6 levels of the machine model shown in Figure 1-2 of Tanenbaum in order to execute a user program.

Revision Date: 4/25/97