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Within this practical core lecture, we will deal with the specification, the implementation, the correctness, and the evaluation of computer hardware.

The following topics will be covered:
- Basics: Combinational & Clocked circuits
- DLX instruction set architecture
- DLX implementation: Sequential, Pipelined implementation, Improved pipelined implementation (forwarding, branch prediction)
- Memory system with caches: In order to gain fast memory accesses, a memory system with caches will be presented.
- Virtual memory support: A virtual memory support is essential for multitasking operating systems; topics like memory management units are covered.
- I/O Device support
A support for I/O devices is essential for user interaction, networking, or data storage.

 
Organizational stuff
  • Every monday an exercise sheet will be handed out.
  • Every tuesday (12-14h, building E1.3, room SR13) starting at November 6th there will be a tutorial.
  • Every tutorial will start with a minitest (15 minutes).
  • Every minitest will contain 3 simple exercises, based on the last exercise sheet.
  • In order to be admited to the exam, one has to solve 50% of all minitest exercises.
  • Office hours of the teaching assistent: on thursdays 13-15h (building E1.3, room 324).
News
  • From now on you can test all your assembler programs with SDS.
  • The 8th exercise will appear some time before the end of this year; the 8th minitest will be written on January 8th, 2008.
  • No lecture Monday 10.12.
  • The oral exam will take place at Friday, February 22nd.
  • An introduction into natural numbers and proving by induction added into the layouts-section.
  • There will be an oral exam at the end of the course (TBA).
  • Course starts at Monday, October 29th.