• Back to the course Web site.
• The GTA assigned to this course is Hamza Mughal (hmughal2@masonlive.gmu.edu). Please address questions related to homework assignments to him. His office hours are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 2-4pm and his office is in room 5321 in the Engr. Bldg. The TA is also available over e-mail. Please address questions related to homework assignments to the GTA. The TA office hours are TBD and their office is in room TBD in the Engr. Bldg. The TAs are also available over e-mail. Please prefix the subject of your messages to them with "CS 465-001" or "CS 465-004" depending on your course section.
• If you are a student with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see me and contact the Office of Disability Services (ODS) at (703) 993-2474. All academic accommodations must be arranged through the ODS.
• Activate your GMU e-mail account by going to https://mail.gmu.edu/ and selecting "Activating my Account". All class-related communication will be sent to your Mason account.
• Resources: University Catalog, University Policies, CS Department Honor Code. and Computing resources available from the Volgenau School of Engineering.
• Academic integrity: a number of projects in this class are designed to be completed within your study group. With collaborative work, names of all the participants should appear on the work. Collaborative projects may be divided up so that individual group members complete portions of the whole, provided that group members take sufficient steps to ensure that the pieces conceptually fit together in the end product. Other projects are designed to be undertaken independently. In the latter case, you may discuss your ideas with others and conference with peers on drafts of the work; however, it is not appropriate to give your paper to someone else to revise. You are responsible for making certain that there is no question that the work you hand in is your own. If only your name appears on an assignment, your professor has the right to expect that you have done the work yourself, fully and independently.
• VSE Labs: Lab hours can be found on the Labs web site. Please remember to save your work to an external drive as any data stored on those computers will not persist after a reboot.
• Read the interview with Daniel Menasce to ACM's Ubiquity, April 2012, before the first day of classes.
• Last day to add or drop classes with no tuition penalty: 9/4/2018.
• Last day to drop classes with tuition penalty: 9/9/2018.
• I recommend a virtual tour of the Computer History Museum.
• Final exam date and time: Deecember 17, 2018 from 4:30pm to 7:15pm.
• IEEE Computer, IEEE Internet Computing, Comm. ACM, and HPC Wire articles for class discussion:
  • Rewarded for RISC,Neil Savage, Communications of the ACM, 61(6), pp. 10-12. This article talks about Dave Patterson and John Hennessy, coauthors of your textbok, who received the 2017 ACM Turing Award (the Nobel Prize for computing).
  • Retrospective on Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era, Mark D. Hill and Michael R. Marty, IEEE Computer, June 2017. Due: September 24, 2018
  • Think Fast – Is Neuromorphic Computing Set to Leap Forward?, John Russell, HPC Wire, August 15, 2016, Due:
  • Extrapolating from Moore's Law Cusumano, Michael A. and Yoffie, David B., Comm. ACM, January 2016. Due: October 1, 2018.
  • A Simple Quantification of the Weakest-Link Phenomenon, Behrooz Parhami, IEEE Computer, July 2015. Due: Due: September 17, 2018.
  • The case for energy-proportional computing, L.A. Barroso ad U. Holzle, IEEE Computer, Vol. 40(12), 2007. Due: .
  • Will Power Problems Curtail Processor Progress?, Leavitt, N., IEEE Computer, vol. 45, No. 5, pp. 15-17. Due: .
  • Analyzing End-to-End Energy Consumption for Digital Services, C. Preist et al., IEEE Computer, vol. 47, No. 5, pp. 92-95. Due:
  • Big Iron Moves Toward Exascale Computing, N. Leavitt, IEEE Computer, vol. 45, No. 11, pp. 14-17. For class discussion on .
  • Sustainable IT: Challenges, Postures, and Outcomes, Curry, E.; Guyon, B.; Sheridan, C.; Donnellan, B., IEEE Computer, vol. 45, No. 11, pp. 79-81. Due:
  • GPUs Go Mobile, Garber, Lee, IEEE Computer, vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 16-19. Due: .
  • Using In-Memory Analytics to Quickly Crunch Big Data, Garber, Lee, IEEE Computer, vol. 45, No. 10, pp. 16-18. For class discussion on
  • Holistic Datacenter Design in the Open Compute Project, Frachtenberg, E., IEEE Computer, Vol. 45, No. 7, 2012, pp. 83-85. Due:
  • Cloud computing: The new normal?, S. Murugesan, IEEE Computer Vol. 46(1), 2-13. Due:
  • Measuring Green IT in Society, Zhiwei Xu, IEEE Computer, vol.45, no.5, pp.83,85, May 2012. Due:.
  • Finding the Needle in the Big Data Systems Haystack, Kraska, T., IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE , vol.17, no.1, pp.84,86, Jan.-Feb. 2013. Due:
  • Len Kleinrock: The First Two Packets on the Internet, C. Severance, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE , vol.18, no.3, pp. 10-11, March 2004. Due: TBD.
  • Breaking Moore's Law: How chipmakers are pushing PCs to blistering new levels, B. Chacos, PCWorld, April 11, 2013. Due: .
• If you are having problems getting to the IEEE articles, go to http://furbo.gmu.edu/dbwiz/it and login with your Mason credentials. Then scroll down to IEEE/IET Electronic Library.
• Reading Assignments from the Textbook:
  • Study sections 1.1 through 1.6 of chapter 1. Due: September 4, 2018.
  • Study sections 1.7 through 1.12 of chapter 1. Due: September 10.
  • Study sections 2.1 through 2.8 of chapter 2: Due: September 17, 2018.
  • Study sections 2.9 through 2.20 (skip 2.15-2.18) of chapter 2: Due: October 1, 2018
  • Study sections 3.1 through 3.5. Due: October 1, 2018.
  • Study sections 3.6 through the end of chapter 3, skipping 3.7. Due: October 1, 2018.
  • Study sections 4.1 through 4.5. Due: October 9, 2018
  • Study sections 4.6 through 4.10. Due:
  • Study sections 4.14-4.15 of the book: Due: .
  • Study sections 5.1-5.5 of the book: Due: .
  • Study sections 5.6-5.10, 5.12, 5.15-5.16 of the book. Due: .
• Install in your computer PathSim, a simulator of the simple data path discussed in sections 4.1-4.4 of Computer Organization and Design, Patterson, D.A. and Hennessy, J. L., Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. This web-based simulator allows its users to enter MIPS assembly code and step-wise execute through the assembled machine code while viewing the values placed on the data lines with each instruction. The url for the latest version of PathSim is: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~mehtaa/comporg/PathSim4/DataPathSimulator/HelpFiles/aboutPathSim.html.
• Midterm. The following sections of the book (and corresponding slides) are included in the midterm: Chapter 1: all; Chapter 2: 2.1-2.14, 2.19-2.20; Chapter 3: 3.1-3.6 (skip faster multiplication and improved division hardware), 3.9-3.10, Chapter 4: 4.1-4.4. The slides used for midterm review are here.
• The final exam is comprehensive. The following sections from the book are included: Chapter 1: all; Chapter 2: 2.1-2.14, 2.19-2.20; Chapter 3: 3.1-3.6 (skip faster multiplication and improved division hardware), 3.9-3.10, Chapter 4: 4.1-4.9, 4.14-4.15; Chapter 5: 5.1-5.10, 5.15-5.16. Chapter 6: 6.1-6.7, 6.13-6.14.
• Homework Assignments (when team work is allowed, all team members must be registered in this session of the course):
  • Assignment 0 (0 points): Due: September 10, 2018.
  • Assignment 1 (100 points): Due: September 26, 2018 at 11:59pm.
  • Assignment 2 (100 points): Due: October 15, 2018 at 23:59pm.. Team work (up to 2 per team) allowed.
  • Assignment 3 (100 points): Due: November 15, 2018 at 11:59pm. Team work (up to 2 per team) allowed.
  • Assignment 4 (100 points): Due: December 3 at 11:59pm. Team work (up to 2 per team) allowed.
• Slides for the final exam review session (with answers)

Last updated: December 6, 2018.