Course Websites

Subject offerings of new and developing areas of knowledge in electrical and computer engineering intended to augment the existing curriculum. See Class Schedule or departmental course information for topics and prerequisites. Course Information: 0 to 4 undergraduate hours. 0 to 4 graduate hours. May be repeated in the same or separate terms if topics vary.

This course is an intensive introduction to the fundamentals of computer architecture. Relying heavily upon the elementary principles taught in ECE 220, and ECE 385, we will discuss the basic design, or architecture, of computing hardware. Computer systems involve architecture design at many levels. We will focus on the instruction set architecture (ISA) level (the interface between the software and computing hardware) and the microarchitecture level (the computing hardware itself). We will examine to some extent, the level above the instruction set (the programming language level) and the level below the microarchitecture (the logic gate level) in order to deepen our understanding of computing systems. Prerequisites: ECE385