CSE 240A -- Principles of Computer Architecture

• Instructor: Michael Taylor
• Office: EBU 3B 4110
• Email:


• Class Meetings:
• Place: Peterson 103
• Time: Tu Th 12:30-1:50


• Office Hours:
• Place: EBU 3B 4110
• Time: Tu Th 2-3pm


• TA: Saturnino Garcia
• Email:
• Office Hours:
  • EBU3b B225
  • Monday 1-2pm, Wednesday 4-4:50pm


• Course Text:
• Hennessy & Patterson,
  "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach",
  3rd Edition, Morgan Kaufmann


• Course Mailing List:
• The class mailing list will be used to make important announcements. If you have not received any e-mails from it (cse240a@cs) then please contact Sat to be added.

11/17/06 - I have uploaded some template files to get you started writing your project 2 report in LaTex. They are available on the project 2 description page under the "project details" section.

11/6/06 - The description for project 2 is available here. It will be due on Tuesday, November 21 at Noon. Please work on it in groups of 2.

11/6/06 - The deadline for HW #3 has been extended to Thursday, November 9 at Noon.

11/2/06 - The winners of the branch prediction contest were revealed!

Ting-Fan Wu wins the Outsmart the tricky prof award for his predictor's near-perfect performance on the anti-21264 trace.

Toshiya Hachisuka wins 5th place for his PPMLK predictor, which had a misprediction rate of 4.55525%.

Nikolaos Trogkanis wins 4th place for his Jimenez-style Perceptron predictor, with a misprediction rate of 4.54458%.

Konstantin Pervyshev won 3rd place, misprediction rate 4.207%, for his Gao-style Perceptron predictor.

Scott Ricketts won 2nd place, misprediction rate 4.06267%, for his Jimenez-style Perceptron predictor.

Vinh Lam won 1st place, misprediction rate 3.84615%, for his OGEHL predictor.

The 2nd and 3rd place winners won copies of the The Butterfly Effect (the closest thing to a Hollywood movie about branch prediction), while the 1st place winner won an electronic gadget that plays 20 questions. We expect that Vinh will be hacking it to improve its ability to do mind-prediction. :-)

10/30/06 - Homework 3 has been posted on the assignment page. It will be due next Tuesday (Nov. 7) at Noon. Remember to turn it in to Sat, either in person or in my mailbox in the grad student mailroom.

10/23/06 - The deadline for project 1 has been extended to Thursday, October 26 at Noon. Please remember to read the project deliverables section and the README to make sure you submit correctly.

10/16/06 - Slides for lecture 6 have been posted here and on the schedule page. Slides used in lecture 5 are in the set for lecture 4.

10/12/06 - Homework 1 was handed back during lecture on Tuesday (Oct. 10). If you didn't pick yours up, please e-mail Sat so he can give it to you. Also, solutions for hw 1 have been e-mailed to everyone via the course mailing list. Make sure you check your inbox for them.

10/10/06 - A practice midterm has been posted here. This gives you a general flavor of the types of problems you can expect on the exam. However, this does not mean that only these types of problems will be on the exam (all reading and lecture material up to Thursday, October 5 is fair game). I will post the answer key in a few days as to encourage you to work on it without having the answers immediately available (to better simulate a testing environment).

10/9/06 - The details for project 1 have been posted here! Again, it is due on Tuesday, October 24 at Noon. Submission is via e-mail to Sat. If you have any questions about the project, contact Sat.

10/9/06 - The schedule page has been updated with a lot of new information. A lot of it is tentative but a couple major items have been set. First, the first midterm will be in class next Tuesday, October 17 (12:30p - 1:50p). It will cover lecture and reading material up to and including that of last Thursday (Oct. 5). This includes material on performance, ISA's, and pipelining. Second, the 1st project will be due on Tuesday, October 24, at noon. More details about the project will be posted soon.

10/4/06 - Homework 2 has been posted on the assignment page. It will be due next Tuesday (Oct. 10) at Noon. Remember to turn it in to me, either in person or in my mailbox in the grad student mailroom.

10/4/06 - Slides from lectures 3 and 4 have been posted on the schedule page.

9/28/06 - Slides from lecture 2 have been posted here. Don't forget to keep up on the reading :)

9/25/06 - Sat's office hours have changed! He will be in EBU3b B225 on Mondays from 1 to 2 and on Wednesdays from 4 to 4:50. If you cannot make it to office hours, please contact Sat and he will try to find a time to meet with you.

9/23/06 - Slides for lecture 1 have been posted and are available on the schedule page. Please note that all lecture slides might not be posted so you are responsible for being at class and taking notes.

9/22/06 - Homework 1 has been posted on the assignments page. It is due Tuesday, October 3 at 11am. Make sure you read the homework policies.

9/13/06 - If you would like to contact Michael or Sat by e-mail, please include the phrase "CSE240A" in the subject so that your e-mail is not eaten by spam filters.

9/13/06 - The course website is now up and functional. Please check here regularly for announcements.