CS 211: Computer Architecture

Spring 2026.

Description

See the CS department web page.

This course covers the fundamental issues in the design of modern computer systems, including the design and implementation of key hardware components such as the processor, memory, and I/O devices, and the software/hardware interface.

Details

This is a fundamental course, equipping students with knowledge that underlies critical computing technology. Throughout the course, students will learn about low-level programming in C and assembly, the instruction pipeline, memory hierarchy, threaded and nonthreaded execution models, and digital logic, the memory hierarchy, and other select topics. The course will also cover specific case studies of recent advances in real-world computer systems.

Students will also be asked to apply their knowledge through several programming assignments and debugging assignments.

At the end of this course, students should have the preliminary skills to design and evaluate solutions involving the computer software-hardware interface to address new problems.

Assessment

• Homeworks (6 totalling 50%)
  • 4 C assignments
  • 1 Assembly
  • 1 Digital Logic
• Exams and quizzes
  • in-recitation evaluations (10% total)
  • 1 midterm (15%)
  • 1 final (25%)

All students must follow the CS department’s academic integrity policy.

Topic List

• Programming in C
• Data representation and computer arithmetic
• Boolean algebra
• Programming in assembly
• Computer Architecture, including cache, memory, and execution
• Parallelism, CPU threaded execution model and GPU threaded execution model
• Digital Logic Design

Resources

• Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective (CS:APP, 3rd ed.)
• cppreference.com/w/c.html

Learning C is an important part of this course, but different students have different learning preferences. In the past, the course has used the Modern C book https://gustedt.gitlabpages.inria.fr/modern-c/, but I’ve been told that makes topics over-complicated. The C Programming Language book, by Kernighan and Ritchie, is popular, but it is unfortunately outdated. The C language has been revised multiple times since that book was published in 1988. For an experienced programmer, the cppreference documentation may be sufficient, but if college has been your only exposure to programming you may find the site obtuse or esoteric. A more approachable alternative could be something like w3 schools.

Lectures and Reading

Lecture material will be located online.