This page provides lists generic course resources that you may find useful. Additional resources are associated with specific lectures. Students are encouraged to read selected textbook chapters and/or review lecture slides before the lecture.
If you have any question or comment, do not hesitate to ask during and/or after the lecture (if time permits), or contact me via e-mail. E-mail is preferred for brief inquiries.
If you need to discuss a topic at length, it is better to arrange an appointment. However, keep in mind that if you have trouble understanding something, the first step is to find the boundary between what is still clear and where things become unclear. I expect you to demonstrate some effort towards discovering this boundary, so that we can focus on a specific problem.
Textbook
The course is historically based on successive editions of the classic textbook by D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy: Computer Organization and Design (5th edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2013, ISBN 978-0124077263).
Since the summer semester of 2024, the course switched to the RISC-V variant of the book (2nd edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2020, ISBN 978-0128203316) edition). That said, using almost any edition should be fine (including the MIPS variant since 3rd edition). The concepts are the same, but chapter or sections numbers mentioned in the lecture resources may be slightly off.
Regardless of the edition, students are assumed to be comfortable with the material in the introductory chapters (number representation, computer arithmetics, instructions of a computer). Building on that, this course focuses on the chapters dealing with the processor design and the memory hierarchy.
Digital circuit designs
Digital circuit designs are available for lectures covering processor data path, control, and cache design. They are to be used with the LogiSim Evolution simulator, version 3.3.0 or later (tested with version 3.8.0). See the individual lectures for specific designs.
Lecture videos
Lectures will not be recorded and lecture videos are generally not available.