MC723 - Computer systems design laboratory

Notices

04/07	The notes for the exercises and works are already on the note board. Students who have taken the exam must urgently contact me to receive an activity to be delivered next week.
30/06	The notes up to exercise 4 are already on the note board. The final grades will be released on Monday (03/07).
23/06	Due to the suspension of office hours on Tuesday, June 27, the schedule for submitting work needs to be changed. There are three options for groups that have not yet presented their work: (06) Present on Tuesday, 1/27 between 06: 8-00: 10 (I will be in the room) 30 or in my office). (302) Schedule an alternative time during the next week for the presentation, sending an email to me until 2/27 at 06:8 am. (00) Groups that do not take either of these steps should make the presentation on Thursday, 3/29 at 06:9 am at IC-00. Group presentations will only be accepted with all members present.
20/06	Final delivery is postponed to Friday, 23/06 - 8:00 am (as always, automatic 1-day grace period). Groups that do not present on 20/06 must do so on 27/06.
25/05	From phase 3 onwards, I will only consider deliveries that are in the specified format.
16/05	Please send the updated specification urgently. The specifications that need to be updated are in the projects page.
02/05	All students have until 05/05 to form groups, choose a topic and talk to me about a more detailed job specification. Put on this page the information of the groups and themes.
25/04	To the groups: look for me to talk about the chosen topics and arrive at a more detailed specification.
20/04	All the activities of Exercise 5 are ready to be carried out. I apologize for the lab's problems on 18/04.
20/04	All the download files have just been moved to the ~ rodolfo / mc723 / download directory to facilitate organization.
20/04	Also choose a theme in the list of groups and put after the names of the components.
18/04	Get organized in groups of, at most, 4 people. Inform the groups on this page.
04/04	Delivery of Exercise 3 postponed to 07/04.
23/03	Exceptionally, next Tuesday, 28/03, there will be no service at the laboratory as I will be traveling all week. The delivery of exercise 3 has been postponed to allow debts to be settled before delivery. Any problem, write to me.
20/03	Tips and suggestions about the reports.
17/03	Whenever you send files to me, put only the 6 digits of the RA as a name, followed by the type of the file (.pdf, .tgz, ...) in lower case. This makes my job much easier.
14/03	Only in the first activity, I will confirm receipt of all emails.
08/03	The maximum number of pages in the reports has been increased to 2. This does not mean that the reports must necessarily have 2 pages, but that they can have 1 or 2 pages.
10/02	Important dates of graduation calendar

Objectives

Improve the concepts learned in the Computer Systems Design course through exercises and the modeling of a system with processor (s) and peripheral (s).

Activities

The semester will be divided into two parts: exercises (~ 6 weeks) and project. In the exercise section, each student will implement small activities to ensure understanding of some basic topics. In the second part, each group will implement a project that will be defined at the beginning of the semester.

All deliveries have an automatic grace period of 24 hours, but I will not accept any justification for postponement based on facts that occurred in those 24 hours.

• Exercises (individual, everyone should do)
• Works (in group, 1 work per group)

REFERENCES

• David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. Computer Organization Design, The Hardware / Software Interface. Morgan Kaufmann
• Language ArchC
• Language SystemC

Exercises

Everyone must do each of the following exercises individually:

• Exercise 1 (delivery 17/03/06 until 8:00)
  
• Exercise 2 (delivery 24/03/06 until 8:00)
• Exercise 3 (delivery 07/04/06 until 8:00)
• Exercise 4 (delivery 13/04/06 until 8:00)
• Exercise 5 (delivery 28/04/06 until 8:00) Attention: This exercise is scheduled for 2 weeks!

Listing with files of submissions that I have already recorded on my computer.

Jobs

Each group will work on one of the themes below. Each job will have 4 delivery dates (3 partial deliveries and 1 final delivery). In case of delay in delivery of the work during the semester, 2 points will be deducted per delivery day, including weekends. The available themes are (you can suggest others):

• Video game console (2 groups)
  
• Modeling of ArchC processors (1 per group): Texas TMS, Cell, etc.
  
• Cellphone
• Cache TLM model
• ArchC floating point unit model
• PDA
• suggestions?

Delivery format

A file with the name gXX.tgz, Where XX Is your group number with 2 digits (Ex .: 01 instead of 1), sent by email containing the subject: MC723 - FY - GXX, Where Y the delivery phase and XX Is your group number. Within this file there must be only one directory with the name gXXWhere XX Is the number of your group, and within that directory it must contain:

• A delivery report with the name gXXfY.pdfWhere XX the name of your group and Y phase number
• The other files required for delivery as below:
• If your project is on a platform, only the file generated by the command arp --pack, after the execution of a make clean not to send garbage. Your project will be tested by unzipping the package sent, executing make e make run. It is the group's obligation to ensure that the desired functionality is available by executing only these three commands
  
• If your project is on a processor, the source files for ArchC
• In other cases, the necessary source files, as well as compilation scripts and documentation.

Any delivery outside the specification that does not have a prior agreement with the teacher will be strictly disregarded.

Calendar

07 / 03T	Presentation of the Course. Exercise 1
14 / 03T	Exercise 1 and Exercise 2
21 / 03T	Exercise 2 and Exercise 3
28 / 03T	Exercise 3
04 / 04T	Exercise 3
11 / 04T	Exercise 4
18 / 04T	Exercise 5
25 / 04T	Exercise 5
02 / 05T	Jobs
09 / 05T	Work - Phase 1 delivery
16 / 05T	Jobs
23 / 05T	Work - Phase 2 delivery
30 / 05T	Jobs
06 / 06T	Work - Phase 3 delivery
13 / 06T	Jobs
20 / 06T	Work - Final Delivery
27 / 06T	Delivery of bills and final service