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 mandatory for a good understanding and active participation to the course. Students without a sufficient background knowledge of these topics are highly encouraged to fill the gap either by actively attending first the first-year course “Computer Science”, or to actively watch its previous years' videorecorded lectures (where available).

• 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, fault tolerance, error detection codes. • An introduction to an Assembly language.

• ALL exams for ALL students, unless differently and explicitly specified, will be run IN PERSON using Polito’s rooms/laboratories and computers/platforms. • The exam includes a mandatory written part and an oral part, which is optional and conducted solely at the discretion of the Professors. • Overall, the whole exam is targeted at evaluating the students both about their knowledge of basic computing systems architectures and their design. • The written exam lasts from 40 to 45 minutes. No books, notes and any other material can be taken/used/read during the written and oral parts of the exam. The written exam is composed of closed-ended and open-ended questions. Both written and oral exam questions are spanning the whole program of the course, i.e., lectures and laboratories. • Several problems proposed as previous written parts will be made available to the students through the web page of the course. A document with the most up-to-date rules will be made available to students during the course. An example of rules (last academic year) is found at https://swiy.co/last-year-rules Please note that, 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 accomplish any Students’ request to have a distributed surveillance (i.e., in a different room/lab than the one of the official exam) or the exam split into different rounds.

Class lectures: about 60% of the course duration; Class exercise time: about 20% of the course duration; Assisted laboratories: about 20% 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 and Virtual Board tools.

• Any general-purpose textbook covering the topics of the course; • Optional additional material provided by the Professors. 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 lectures (previous years);

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

(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 PERSON using Polito’s rooms/laboratories and computers/platforms. The exam includes a mandatory written part and an oral part, which is optional and conducted solely at the discretion of the Professors. The oral part, if required, will take place in the days following the publication of the scores of the written exam. Both the written and oral parts should be taken inside the same call framework. Both the written and oral parts will be run in in-person mode only. • The written part is split into two sections, i.e. quizzes (first section) and open questions/exercises (second section). The following thresholds do apply all together: a) It is necessary that at least 50% of the “quizzes” have been responded b) It is necessary to receive more than 25% of the sum of the “quizzes” positive points c) To pass the written exam it is necessary to receive at least 18 points For if not, there will be a rejection. No corrections of the second section will be made by Professors to written exams which did not comply with BOTH the thresholds a) and b). • After the end of the written exam, the students will likely (but it is not guaranteed) receive a copy of their solution (the way how this will occur, depends on the sw tools that will be used by Polito), likely with the single scores of the individual quizzes. • The Professor’s corrected written exam files will be likely returned to the students through Portale della Didattica. • The written exam part has to be intended NOT as a collection of points to be added, bus a whole, where the answers to the “open questions” provide an additional/complementary evaluation “as a whole” to the performances obtained by responding to the quizzes. Therefore, NO DETAILS ABOUT THE SCORES of each “open question” WILL BE PROVIDED or shared, but only, once available, the final score of the written part. • The available number of points of the written part is 30, to allow a small “buffer”. However, no more than 27 can be awarded as a final grade for the written exam only. The maximum number of points of each single exercise will be provided inside the text of the written exam. • Students targeting at possibly improving their written exam score, inclusive also of possibly obtaining a final score higher than 27, must go through an additional oral exam part, provided that both their written part’s score is at least 25 and they booked in advance the oral exam. As a matter of an efficient organization, the oral booking request shall be me made as a part of the written exam; no later requests or using different tools (e.g., email) will be accepted. Once made, the request cannot be withdrawn. The oral examination can be conducted with any of the professors involved in the course (regardless of the alphabetical or any other division). • Professors, at their sole discretion (no explanation is necessary) may request some Students who have passed the written exam, to go through the additional oral part. • The calendar of the oral exam parts (if any), organized in “slots” will be provided by Professors, and shall be communicated in batches and can take place in different days. Students who did request the oral exam as well as additional Students who have been included in the list at the only discretion by Professors, have to timely show up before the official start of the slot where they have been assigned to, for if not they will be excluded from the oral exam and a rejection will be recorded. No late arrivals will be accepted. • At the oral exam part there will be two categories of asked questions, i.e. “classical” and “design”. Eligible students wishing to target a final grade larger than 27 must explicitly request a design question to Professors at the beginning of the oral. A necessary but not sufficient condition to get a final score larger than 27, is to have successfully responded to one “design” question. • The number of questions asked during the oral exam part is at the only discretion of Professors, who can decide at any time to end the oral exam part. In addition, failure to respond in a sufficient way to a single oral exam part question (of any type, as described below), will imply a negative evaluation for that question and the immediate termination of the oral exam. • The oral exam part (“classical”+“design” questions) receives an evaluation score ranging from “minus infinity” up to at most 5 additional points; this evaluation, which is not explicitly communicated to the Students, is combined, as a whole, by Professors to the written exam score, thus forming the final grade (which can also be a rejection). • In case of oral exam part, the final grade is not immediately communicated to the Student but directly recorded in Portale Della Didattica and “validated” not earlier than the end of all the oral exam parts. Please note that even if in “validated” form, the final grade can also be frozen/revoked in case of deferral of the Student to the Commissione Disciplinare for potential misconduct investigation. Once validated, the grade (either in numerical or “rejection” form) will be accessible and visible by the Students in their own Portale della Didattica page. • Validated grades are final and Students have the option, by following Politecnico’s policies and procedures, to accept or reject them, without the intervention of the Professors. No discussion is possible on validated grades. Students are invited to abstain from sending any request on this topic. • As the written exam (plus the oral, if any) is targeted, as a whole, to evaluate the knowledge of the student(s), no partial/global scores, such as these of open questions or oral exam, will be communicated. The final grade will be recorded to Portale Della Didattica and the students will have the option to keep it or self-reject. Please note that in case of rejections, a non-numbered rejection will be recorded. Students, based on the corrected version of their written exam, do have their own awareness to self-evaluate how much effort is necessary to further study the exam. • Students showing a cheating conduct and, in general, trying to bypass the rules above and Politecnico’s policies, will be (at a minimum) reported to Commissione Disciplinare. This includes any non-professional conduct, inclusive but not limited to undue pushing to Professors for any reason, such as (but not limited to): undue complaints about "personal technical problems" while completing the written exam, scholarship undue complaints, late booking/arrivals to written or oral exams, single/multiple undue requests, “negotiations”, undue requests to bypass the course’s & Polito’s policies, etc). • Whenever possible/feasible, a videocall will be scheduled for some students to request clarifications about one correction of the solutions they provided. This videocall session shall require a prior booking by interested students, followed, i.e., explicitly solicited on demand by Professors, by an email from the student to all Professors, carrying the explicit text of the question being asked during the videocall; lack of this email, will void the booking to the videocall. All Students who are not successfully booked and at the same time have not been explicitly contacted by Professors to send their question, are kindly requested to abstain from sending any email. • At the complete end of all the operations above, the final grades (ranging from a non-numerical “reject/fail” to 30L) shall be returned to the students through their registration in Portale della Didattica. • In the rare event of Politecnico-decided remote exams, all exam parts run in remote mode will be video-recorded; Students not wishing to be video-recorded unfortunately, will not be admitted to the exam.

In addition to the message sent by the online system, students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are invited to directly inform the professor in charge of the course about the special arrangements for the exam that have been agreed with the Special Needs Unit. The professor has to be informed at least one week before the beginning of the examination session in order to provide students with the most suitable arrangements for each specific type of exam.