By the end of the course, you are expected to be able to:

• Translate a given high-level program to assembly/machine language
  • Represent numbers, characters, and other forms of data in binary
  • Express logic using assembly language instructions
  • Utilize registers, the stack, the heap, and the data segment to store data
  • Encode assembly language instructions in machine language format

• Build a CPU out of basic building blocks such as gates and flip-flops
• Build the ALU using gates and Verilog
• Design the CPU's datapath and control
• Implement a pipeline and handle its hazards
• Augment the CPU with a cache

• Assess the end-to-end performance
  • Identify the key performance drivers and their physical limits
  • Compare and contrast the RISC and CISC approaches
  • Compute the throughput of a pipelined CPU for a given code fragment
  • Analyze the effect of a cache of a given specs on the system's performance