Course Plans: CS 3710

The objective of this course is to offer you a setting in which you can put into practice what you have learnt in various previous courses, including digital design, computer architecture, and programming. You will accomplish this by designing your own simple computer all the way down to the level of gates. The lecture schedule of this course will offer us a common time and place to meet and discuss the progress of your designs. The first month of this course will consist of lectures by me on necessary overall directions, tools and languages, documenting designs (including what notations are available to choose from, and what to choose in a given situation), and the state of the art is in terms of higher level formal and semi-formal design specification and verification methods. There will also be labs in which we will be aiming to create the necessary infrastructure for further work, realizing at an early stage (by trying to do things) what is lacking, and getting some of the uncertainties out of the way.

Section  talks about the general course plans. Section 1 talks about the primary focus, namely the processor including the CPU and its peripherals that you will be designing. Section 2 describes what each of you individually and your project group (to be discussed) should have achieved by the end of the semester, the grading method, and the points distribution. Section 3 provides an overview of our specific steps to achieve all this.