AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The teaching unit provides the student with the technical and methodological tools to understand and describe the characteristics, functions and interactions of the main components of a modern electronic calculator, its architecture, the functions of the hardware units that compose it and the interactions between them.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course provides the student with the technical and methodological tools to understand and describe the characteristics, functions and interactions of the main components of a modern electronic calculator.

At the end of the course, a student who has successfully followed it will be able to evaluate the use of computer systems in the context of specific application problems.

TEACHING METHODS

Lessons held in presence.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Introduction to computer architecture and the principles of virtualization and abstraction. Evolution of the architecture of electronic computers and their performance. Performance based design.

Instruction Set Architecture: the case of the RISC-V processor.

Characteristics of instructions: format, representation, types. Types of operands and addressing modes. Instruction set design. Procedure support. Compiler interactions and code optimizations.

Arithmetic Logic Unit. Internal architecture. Addition and multiplication of integers. Representations of real numbers (IEEE 754). Addition and multiplication of floating point numbers.

The central processor. Processor architecture. Registry organization. Instruction execution cycle. Statement Pipelining. Data and control conflicts. Data forwarding and hazard detection.

The main memory. Memory hierarchy. Cache memory: operating principles, design elements (size, translation functions, replacement algorithms, write policy, multilevel caches).

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Struttura e progetto dei calcolatori di D. Patterson, J. Hennessy, Zanichelli.

Material provided during the course and made available through Aulaweb:

https://2023.aulaweb.unige.it/course/view.php?id=8622

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

PIERPAOLO BAGLIETTO (President)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

https://corsi.unige.it/8719/p/studenti-orario

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

1. an oral exam on all the topics of the course

2. a written exercise to be carried out and discussed at the same time as the oral exam.

Anyone who has obtained a positive mark but not registered can take the exam again. In this case, when the exam is taken again, the previously acquired mark will be cancelled. The exam method will be face-to-face. The teacher will propose an appointment via e-mail for each student enrolled in a session starting from the date entered in the calendar for this session and in compliance with the registration order.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Oral questions and written exercises on the topics of the course.

FURTHER INFORMATION

In order to be able to profitably follow the lessons, the student must possess general notions on programming, imparted within the course of "Fondamenti di Informatica", and on logical networks subject of the "Reti Logiche" course.