Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MITx) is conducting an online course on 'Computation Structures 3: Computer Organization'. The course enables students to learn how to build a computer system using a processor?
About the Course:
Computation Structures Part-3 gives an introduction to the hardware/software interface. The course structure is similar to the course syllabus, offered by the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The course comprises of following subjects: Pipelined computers, virtual memories, implementation of a simple time-sharing operating system, interrupts and real-time, and techniques for parallel processing.
After completion of course students will have a basic comprehension on How to operate pipelining to accelerate a processor's throughput? How to share a single processor for various tasks using Virtualization?Fundamental organisation of a simple time-shared operating system?, and Appropriate techniques for parallel processing?
Prerequisites:
Candidate, who has completed MITx 6.004.2x Computation Structures 2: Computer Architecture is eligible to join the course.
Course Syllabus
- Pipelined Beta: pipelined execution of instructions, data and control hazards, resolving hazards using bypassing, stalling and speculation
- Virtual Memory: extending the memory hierarchy, paging using hierarchical page maps and look-aside buffers, contexts and context switching, integrating virtual memories with caches.
- Operating Systems: processes, interrupts, time sharing, supervisor calls
- Devices and Interrupts: device handlers asynchronous I/O, stalling supervisor calls, scheduling, interrupt latencies, weak and strong priority systems
- Processes, Synchronization and Deadlock: inter-process communication, bounded buffer problem, semaphores for precedence and mutual exclusion, semaphore implementation, dealing with deadlock
- Interconnect: the truth about wires, point-to-point vs. shared interconnect, communication topologies
- Parallel Processing: instruction-, data- and thread-level parallelism, Amdahl's Law, cache coherency
- Digital Systems in the Lab: hardware description languages, Verilog example, introduction to field-programmable gate arrays
- Labs: optimizing your Beta design for size and speed, emulating instructions, extending a simple time-sharing operating system
Course Details:
- Course starts on: May 24, 2016
- Course length: 9 weeks