EE180 introduces students to computer architecture and the design of efficient computing and memory systems. The key topics of this course include: hardware/software interface (instruction set, data and thread level parallelism), assembly language programming, efficiency metrics (performance, power, energy, and cost), processor design (pipelining and vectors), memory hierarchy (cache, main memory), virtualization, basic I/O, and custom accelerator design. The programming assignments provide an introduction to performance optimization of software on a modern architecture and the design of a processor.

  At the completion of the course, you will understand how to determine the performance of processor-based digital systems, why they are designed that way, and how to implement your own accelerator design.

  EE180 is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students who are specializing in the interrelated discipline of hardware/software systems. It is also appropriate for other EE and CS students who want to understand, optimize, or design their own processor based digital-system of any scale in their day-to-day work. Post EE180, students can take EE282, a class on advanced computer system architecture, and modern datacenter hardware/software architecture.