Microprocessors and Personal Computers

Code:

EIC0016

Acronym:

MPCP

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Computer Arquitechture

Instance: 2020/2021 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Course/CS Responsible:	Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIEIC	265	Syllabus since 2009/2010	1	-	6	56	162

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

BACKGROUND

The PC-compatible desktop and mobile platforms are an everyday tool in modern societies. Their architecture reflects the current technological development, but also defines the limits of the computer's capabilities and performance. Variants of the ARM instruction set are used today n most mobile platforms (tablets, mobile phones)in use today. Both system architecture and ISA have a deep impact on the day-to-day practice of informatics engineers.

SPECIFIC AIMS

The course unit Microprocessors and Personal Computers aims to develop, combine and apply concepts in the areas of Computer Architecture and Programming Languages. On the one hand, the course explores the relationships between the CPU instruction set and low-level programming (assembly language). On the other hand, recognizing that the architecture of modern personal computers goes far beyond the architecture of the CPU, the course addresses the general architecture of a computational platform, including data storage subsystem and other peripherals. The discussion is based on the ARMv8 64-bit CPU architecture. Upon successful completion of this course, students will have acquired the ability to identify and describe the architecture of the computational platforms in use today, as well as the ability to apply assembly programming to the implementation of algorithms.

PERCENTUAL DISTRIBUTION

• Scientific component: 60%
• Technological component: 40%

Learning outcomes and competences

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Identify and describe the major subsystems of a personal computer;
• Describe and assess the performance of data storage systems (magnetic disks);
• Describe, select and evaluate the performance of different methods of communicating with peripherals (polling, interrupts, DMA)
• Explain the principles of operation of buses for communication with peripherals.
• Explain and evaluate the contribution of each subsystem to the overall performance;
• Use tools for compiling and debugging (assembler, debugger);
• Describe the architecture of instruction set ARMv8 (64-bit version);
• Develop short programs in ARMv8 assembly language ;
• Explain the operation of programs written in ARMv8 assembly language;
• Explain the mechanisms for invocation of subroutines;
• Use modular subroutines to implement programs;
• Use floating-point instructions;
• Employ SIMD instructions for explicit exploitation of data parallelism;
• Establish a correspondence between assembly code and C/C++ source code.

Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

Prerequisite:

EIC0083: principles of assembly language programming and computer organization.

Corequisite:

EIC0012: basic principles of C/C++ language programming.

Program

1. Introduction to computational platforms.


2. Direct-mapped cache memories.


3. Peripheral Interface: polling, interrupts, DMA. Buses for communication with peripherals.


4. Data storage subsystem.


5.  Programming model of an ARMv8 microprocessor. Addressing modes. Functionality and organization of an "assembler".


6. Instructions for data transfer, arithmetic and logic. Flow control instructions: conditional and unconditional jumps.


7. Subroutines (invocation, parameter passing). Modular programming.


8. Floating-point data processing;


9. SIMD instructions for explicit data parallelism.

Mandatory literature

David Patterson, John Hennessy; Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface ARM Edition, Elsevier / Morgan Kaufmann, 2016. ISBN: 9780128017333 (Note that other versions do not use the same CPU.)
João Canas Ferreira; Apresentações das aulas teóricas

Complementary Bibliography

Bruce Jacob; Spencer W. Ng ; David T.Wang; Memory Systems - Cache, DRAM, Disk (May be accessed through the Knovel Portal)

Teaching methods and learning activities

Theoretical classes: Oral presentation of the different topics of the course. This presentation will be supported, when possible, with examples and its discussion.

Practical classes: The methodology of the practical classes is based in the presentation, discussion, and resolution of problems that will be tested on a computational platform or CPU emulator.

Software

DS-5 Community Edition

keywords

Technological sciences > Engineering > Computer engineering

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	50,00
Teste	20,00
Participação presencial	10,00
Trabalho prático ou de projeto	20,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	86,00
Frequência das aulas	56,00
Trabalho laboratorial	20,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

The student cannot miss more than 25% of the planned practical sessions.

Only students that already attended more than 75% of the planned practical sessions in the last two years (2018/19 and 2019/20) are not subject to this requirement.

Calculation formula of final grade

Distributed assessment comprises:

• Assembly programming exercises (A): 40% (4 best scores out of 5);
• Written test (T) : 40%
• Participation in TP  sessions (P): 20%.
  (Grades by instructor.)

The grade for the distributed assessment (AD) is calculated as:

AD = 0.4×A + 0.4×T + 0.2×P

The course assessment comprises:

• Distributed assessment (AD)
• Final exam (E)

The final grade is calculated as:

Final grade = maximum(0.5×E + 0.5×AD; E)

Missing components count as zero.

The test has two parts: 1) multiple-choice questionnaire, with a duration of 45 minutes; 2) open questions (45 minutes).

For successful course completion, students must fulfil all the following conditions:

• Grade for distributed assessment equal to or greater than 5.0 (in 20) in the current or in previous years;
• Exam grade equal to or greater than 5.0 (in 20);
• Final grade (rounded to units) equal to or greater than 10 (in 20).

Classification improvement

The course  grade can be improved by taking the retake exam (similar to the regular exam).

Observations

The development of microcomputer applications requires knowledge of computer architecture, microprocessors, low-level programming languages (assembly) and interfacing to external physical devices. This course unit comes in course plan after the course “Computer Architecture and Organization” and its objective is to develop and apply these concepts in the context of the AArch64 architecture.