Fall 2001, Instructor: Dean Tullsen

    Veteran's Day office hours -- Prof. Tullsen's Monday office hour has been moved to Tuesday, Nov. 13, 10-11.  Mrunal's Monday office hours have been moved to Thursday, Nov. 15, 5:30-6:30.  Xin's have been moved to Tuesday, Nov. 13, 3-4.

Lab Assignments

(CSE 141 home page)

Basic Course Information:

• Instructor: Dean Tullsen
• AP&M 4250
• tullsen@cs
• office hours: M 2-3, W 10-11
• TA: Mrunal Kulkarni
• office hours: M 11-1, W 3-4
• room: AP&M 3337D (or in lab, AP&M 2444)
• mmrunal@yahoo.com
• TA: Xin Liu
• office hours: M 3-4, W 11-12
• room: AP&M 3337D (or in lab, AP&M 2444)
• xinliu@cs.ucsd.edu
• Meeting times and places
• CSB 001, F 2:30-3:20
• Course textbooks and tools

There is no textbook for the class, but you will find the CSE 141 textbook helpful in many ways during the lab

Patterson & Hennessy, "Computer Organization and Design -- The Hardware/Software Interface", Morgan Kaufmann, Second Edition

The lab will utilize, for some of the lab assignments, the Xilinx foundation tools (version 2.1).

• Other recommended reading
• Hennesy & Patterson, "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", 2nd edition, Morgan Kaufmann
• a more advanced treatment of many of the same topics in the textbook
• CPU Info Center
• everything you'd ever want to know about available commercial CPUs
• WWW Computer Architecture Home Page
• a comprehensive guide to research and general information on computer architecture available on the web.
• Computer Organization and Design, the website
• Assignments:
• Labs will typically be due two weeks after they are assigned.
• Once it is set up, the class mailing list will be used by the instructor and the TAs for announcements, etc. All students will be held responsible for announcements and information that go out over the class mailing list. Make sure you are on it. To sign up for the mailing list, send mail to listserv@ucsd.edu, with a blank subject and one line in the body:  add my_email_address cse141lab-l
• We have also set up a webboard for asking questions that would be of interest to all.  To sign up to use it, go to http://webboard.ucsd.edu, select the 141L board, and click the "new user" button.  It is expected that you will peruse the web board regularly, particularly before you send us mail about a problem.  I have initialized it with several conference topics, but if there is another topic you'd like added, let me know.

• The grade for 141L will be based solely on 4 lab reports. I expect that most students will complete the lab assignments as specified; thus, the quality of the lab reports will likely be the most important factor in determining grades.
• Late assignments are not encouraged. All lab reports are due at the beginning of class on Friday.  Anything else is considered late.  You will have one grace weekend during the quarter. I.e., you can turn one assignment in late, as long as it is in my office (under the door) before 9 a.m. on Monday. I recommend not spending that grace time frivolously early in the quarter. After you have spent your grace days, late assignments will be accepted, but with significant penalties. We will make every effort to return assignments to you in a timely manner -- limiting your ability to turn things in late is, unfortunately, critical to that goal.

• Cheating WILL be taken seriously. It is not fair to honest students to take cheating lightly, nor is it fair to the cheater to let him/her go on thinking that is a reasonable alternative in life. Don't test me on this one.
• The following is not considered cheating:

-discussing the tools or logic design techniques with other groups.
• The following is:

-Copying lab designs from someone who is not your partner, or lab report text from anyone.
-Viewing lab designs or lab reports from anyone who is not your partner, including those who have taken the class in previous years.
-Altering timing data produced by Xilinx, e.g. to make a non-working design appear to be working.
• Penalties -- anyone copying information or having information copied on a lab will receive an F in the class and will not be allowed to drop.  They will be reported to their college dean.  If you can prove non-cooperative copying took place, your grade may be restored, but you must prove it to the dean -- I don't want to be involved.

• There will be about 4 lab assignments. Each will require a written report. There will be no midterms or finals associated with the lab portion of the class. The final grade will be determined by the quality of the lab reports and the completeness and quality of the lab work (as demonstrated in the reports).
• Some but not all of the labs will require the Xilinx tools, which everyone should be familiar with.
• Most (but not all) of the labs can be done in groups of 1 to 3. Lab reports are to be done collaboratively with your fellow group members, except when specifically instructed otherwise.  Changing, splitting, merging of groups is only to be done with the permission of the instructor, and such permission is typically not given.
• Lab resources:
Xilinx Foundation tools are available in
-APM 2444 and  EBU2 315
-personal copies of Xilinx are available through the bookstore and bigwords.com.
Suns will be available in the uAPE lab in the AP&M basement.