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CSE 240A -- Principles in Computer Architecture

Fall 2025
Instructor: Dean Tullsen


Basic Course Information:

  • Instructor: Dean Tullsen
  • TAs: Archit Agarwal, Hosein Yavarzadeh

  • Meeting times and place:
  • Course textbook
  • Other background reading
  • Let me emphasize that the prerequisite material for this course is an undergraduate class that covered ISA design, pipelining, caches, etc. If you do not have the prerequisites, you will struggle to keep up in this class.
  • There will be a pretest to help us all sort this out. The pretest will be handed out (virtually, via gradescope) the first day of class and will be due on the first Tuesday. It cannot be made up if you miss it -- for late enrollers, there will be a 1 week late turn in, for reduced credit.

  • To get on the piazza discussion board for the class, please go to this link.

  • Assignments (other than tests and pretest) will be of three types:
  • traditional homeworks, e.g., problems from the book, typically with 1-week notice.
  • small projects, typically involving simulation and analysis tools
  • reading summaries for papers (I will try to give one week notice on reading assignments. History indicates I don't always succeed.)
  • We will be using Canvas for lecture slides, homework assignments, announcements, etc. Make sure you are on it regularly. This page is a very abbreviated version of the syllabus. The complete one can be found on Canvas.

  • Course Outline: I expect students to have the highest standards of integrity in a graduate class. However, we will check aggressively for cheating, including copying off of other people or from online resources, etc. If cheating is found, of any kind, severe consequences will result.