CS-341 Computer Organization

Section 9TA3 (1076)
Section E6TPA (2753)

Spring 2002

Course Administration

Class Meetings

Section 9TA3 meets in Science Building room B-141 from 9:00 to 10:50 AM on Tuesdays, and from 10:00 to 10:50 AM on Fridays.

Section E6TPA meets from 6:00 to 7:15 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At least initially, Tuesday classes will meet in Kiely 321 and Thursday classes will meet in Kiely 416.

Office Hours

Most office hour business can be handled by email. My address is vickery at qc dot edu. Be sure to include "CS-341" in the subject line of every message you send me, and be sure to include your name in the body of each message.

If you want to see me in person, I will be available in my office, Science Building room A-222, for half an hour after each class for the day section, and by appointment for half an hour before class for the evening section. I will also be available Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 8:45 to 9:10, but I may be in SB D-133 instead of my office then.

Textbooks

There is one textbook for the course:

Murdocca, Miles J. and Heuring, Vincent P.
Principles of Computer Architecture
Prentice Hall, 2000
ISBN 0-201-43664-7

We will be covering material from chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and Appendices A and B. Reading assignments are on the [ Course Schedule ] web page.

Homework and Exams

There will be several homework assignments, but they will count only 5% of your course grade. That is, if there are ten homework assignments, each one will count 0.5% of your course average.
You must submit your own homework solutions, but you are free to work on the homework assignments with anyone you wish; the idea is to use the homework as a way to reinforce the material in the course, not as a test of your knowledge. I will record whether or not you hand in homeworks by the assigned due dates, but I will not evaluate your homework in any way. Instead, I will send the solutions to you by email after the assignment due date.
There will be two midterm exams and a final exam. The two midterms will count 30% each, and the final will count 35%. Each exam will cover approximately 1/3 of the course (see the [ Course Schedule ] web page for dates), and the final exam will include some reveiw material from earlier parts of the course (about 15% of the exam).
If your lowest exam score is ten points or less below your middle exam score, its weight will be reduced by 10% and the weights of the other two exams will be increased by 5% each.

Check Your Grades

You can check the scores I have recorded for your homework and exams at the Check Grades link from your section's course schedule. To use this facility, you will need to enter your student ID number and a "code word." The code word is like a password, but it is not as secure as a real password because you must tell me what it is in order to set it up. (Never send a real password to anyone, not even a professor!) See the link to Homework Assignment 1 on your section's course schedule for details.

Grades become permanent and cannot be changed two weeks after they are posted, so be sure to monitor your grades regularly to be sure they are recorded correctly.