The course presents the architecture of a basic computer system in all its components and features. It also provides highlights of the techniques for elementary hardware design as well as of assembly programming.

This course is a natural bridge between the first-year course “Computer Science” and the following courses on computer engineering, including “Operating Systems” and “Computer Networks”. Its role is therefore to smoothly and naturally complete the basic knowledge of a computing system acquired during the course “Computer Science” and, at the same time, to gently stimulate the Student to target at more complex issues such as the low level programming and a deeper understanding of the hardware and software interactions of the different components in a computer. By attending this course the Student is expected to increase her/his overview and knowledge of computer based systems, to become more aware of the issues related to the design and management of a computer, and to have one more opportunity to nurture the curiosity qualities that are at the basis of a future Computer Engineer. An important contribution to successfully meet the above expectations comes from the laboratory lectures, where the Students are provided with the possibility of studying and practically approach how to use physical hardware computer platforms to solve real problems.

A deep and well-assessed knowledge and experience of the topics covered during the first-year course “Computer Science” is definitely highly recommended.

• Basics, examples and exercises of simple combinational and sequential circuit design and related issues, such as testing of the correct behavior, memory/area/speed tradeoff, energy consumption, delay and critical path; • The components of a microprocessor-based system and their interactions: CPU, cache memory, main memory, secondary memory, peripherals, Input/Output devices and related addressing and communication issues, buses and addressing modes; • Some “milestones” of Computer Engineering: virtualization, parallelization of operations, operating systems, reduced instruction set computers, configurable devices. • An introduction to the Assembly language.

COMMON EXAM RULES (ANY MINOR CHANGES TO THESE POLICIES/PROCEDURES WILL BE TIMELY COMMUNICATED TO THE STUDENTS) ALL exams for ALL students, unless differently and explicitly specified, will be run in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mode, using MOOC/remote-exams-like-tools such as the lockdown browser. The way all of this will be run, depends on the choice of the hw/sw tools that will be chosen by the professors in full compliance with Politecnico's policies and procedures; information about the technical way which will be used to run the remote written exam, will be shared, when available, through portale della didattica. This applies both to students attending in person and to students attending in remote mode. It is therefore mandatory that all students do have a working and well-configured laptop to run the exam, and a power adaptor. No paper and pencil exam will be possible. In addition, due to the extremely large number of students involved, it is impossible for professors to have any type of "ad-hoc" exams, i.e., outside the framework described here. It is also impossible for the professor, given the extremely large number of students enrolled, to have a distributed surveillance (i.e., in a different room than the one of the official exam) or the exam split into different rounds. All Students are therefore requested to check, well in advance to the calls, to have a personal computer which is properly working and configured to run the exam in BYOD mode in the room where it will take place. In this framework, the default option is that a proctoring software will be used for ALL students, in full compliance with Politecnico's policies and procedures. If available, proctoring software could be not required, by choice of the Professors, for students attending in person the exam. In general, exceptions to this "default" will be promptly communicated through "portale della didattica" in the "news section". • The exam consists of a written part plus a mandatory oral part, which will take place in the next days following the written part. Both the written and oral parts should be taken inside the same call framework. The oral part will be run either in remote or in-person mode at the only discretion of professors, who will timely communicate the chosen mode to the students. The default is the in-person mode. • The first part accounts up to 24 points. First parts which did not award at least 1 point in the first 4 “test-questions” and least 13 points in the overall written exam, will lead to a straight rejection (no oral exam). No correction will be made by Professors to written exams which did not get at least 1 point in the first 4 “test-questions”. • The oral questions following the program(s) discussion, can decrease by any amount the first part score, or add up to 9 additional points. Failure to respond in a sufficient way can at any time lead to a rejection, which has not necessarily to be communicated immediately, but in general will follow the general protocol to communicate the final results through portale della didattica or other similar systems. • As a general policy, no partial scores will be communicated to the students while in the middle of either the written or oral part. The final scores will be made available some days after the end of the last oral exam, through portale della didattica in the personal page of each student, as “temporary unconfirmed score”. A student can request the rejection of the score usually by 12 noon CET of the day after the partial scores have been published, or by the deadline communicated by the Professors in Portale della Didattica. Later requests will be not considered. Requests become effective only once they have been approved by the Professors. • As a matter of professional and respectful conduct, as the exam should not be perceived as a “collection” of points, but as an overall evaluation, a constraint applies to the possibility of obtaining the rejection of a final score. In case the score of the written exam has been communicated to a student before the beginning of the oral exam, a student’s request to reject the score will not be accepted if the final score has been obtained by adding 7 or more points of the oral to the written part. For example: written exam = 22, final score = 29  oral exam = 7  not possible to get a score rejection. • For ALL Students, the first part will be run in “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) Mode if in-person, or with “remote tools” if in remote-mode, by using Polito systems (please check the “flow” document for more details) for all students. • No paper and pencil exam will be possible. In addition, due to the extremely large number of students involved, it is impossible for professors to have any type of "ad-hoc" exams, i.e., outside the framework described here. It is also impossible for the professor, given the extremely large number of students enrolled, to have a distributed surveillance (i.e., in a different room than the one of the official exam) or the exam split into different rounds. All Students are therefore requested to check, well in advance to the calls, to have a personal computer which is properly working and configured to run the exam in BYOD mode in the room where it will take place. • Students have to actively book to the oral part, by some tight deadline, which will be communicated after the end of the written part, and by using the tools that will be communicated by the professors. Multiple bookings are not permitted and will receive penalties. Failure to book will void the exam. Not showing up at the beginning of the oral slot a student will be assigned to voids the exam. • For remote exams, each part will start with the identification of the students, through an ID, webcam and microphone; students who do no not have all these peripherals, plus a reliable computer system with a recent operating system matching the specifications of the software used by Polito and Zoom (and all other systems which could be used), unfortunately will not be admitted to the exam. For in-person exams, the ID check will be done by directly showing their ID to professors. • For remote exams, it is mandatory that students, not before 7 days but at least 48 hours before the beginning of the call (i.e. the written part) send from their institutional polito student email address to the address mn.polito.it@gmail.com the scanned one-page undersigned form which will be made available through portale della didattica, certifying the awareness of students about the ethic and anti-misconduct procedures to attend and run remote exams. The subject should be “student#, last name, first name, course name, date of the written call” and the attachment should of good quality and not larger that 0.5 Mbyte. In case this email is not received and/or does not meet the necessary requirements, the exam will be voided (even if in case the student shows up). Please not upload your ID, but only the scanned code of honor. Digitally signed forms are accepted and encouraged. • All exam parts will be recorded; students who do not want to be recorded unfortunately will not be admitted to the exam.

• Class lectures: about 62% of the course duration; • Class exercise time: about 20% of the course duration; • Assisted laboratories: about 18% of the course duration. Students are highly invited to interact with Lecturers, both at lecture and exercise times. In addition, Students are highly recommended to interact also by using the resources made available through the web pages of the Course, such as the Forum tools.

• Any general purpose textbook covering the topics of the course; • Optional additional material provided by the Lecturers. Additional reading (among all): • V.C. Hamacher et al., Computer Organization, McGraw-Hill, 2005 • M. Morris Mano, C. R. Kime, Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals, 4th edition, Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2008

Video lezioni tratte da anni precedenti;

Modalità di esame: Prova scritta (in aula); Prova orale facoltativa; Prova scritta in aula tramite PC con l'utilizzo della piattaforma di ateneo;

Exam: Written test; Optional oral exam; Computer-based written test in class using POLITO platform;

... The written exam lasts about 45 minutes. The written exam (accounting up to 24 points) is composed of closed-ended and open-ended questions on the whole program of the course. An oral exam (accounting up to 9 more points) follows the written exam. The oral and the written parts cover the whole program of the course. In order to have access to the oral exam, it is necessary a minimum score of 12 points for the written part. Otherwise a rejection will be recorded. If the result of the written part is larger than or equal to 18, then the student can request the registration of the final grade of the exam. In all other cases, the student will (can) have an oral exam, consisting of at most three additional questions adding up to 9 more points. The three questions will span the full program and can also involve the discussion of the laboratory exercises. Failure to satisfactorily responding a question, will imply a negative score for that question and the immediate termination of the oral exam. If less than 18 points are obtained, a rejection will be registered. Professor(s) has (have) the right to ask at any time oral questions to get a better and more complete picture of the student's preparation. The final grade will be determined by adding up all the points collected by the student and rounding the numerical result. Laude will be granted to all students whose number of points exceeds or is equal to 31.5. Overall, the exam is targeted at evaluating the students both about their knowledge of basic computing systems architectures and their design. Several problems proposed as previous written parts will be made available to the students through the web page of the course.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.