Digital Logic Design and Computer Architecture

Instructor: Prof. Sayandeep Saha

Course Details

  • Lecture Slot: 2
  • Lecture Venue: LH 102
  • Lecture Days: Monday(10:35-11:30), Tuesday (10:35-11:30), and Thursday (10:35-11:30)
  • Piazza class: Link (Access Code : cs230)
  • Instructor office hours: After class or get an appointment via email
  • The lecture slides used in this course are inspired and partially adapted from the excellent teaching materials of Prof. Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Prof. Biswabandan Panda, Prof. Rajib Mall, Prof. Onur Mutlu, Prof. Joel Emer, Prof. Krste Asanović, Prof. Arvind, Prof. John Kubiatowicz, Prof. David Patterson, Prof. James Hoe, and several other distinguished researchers in computer architecture. All original copyrights remain with the respective authors and their institutions. These materials are used here solely for non-commercial educational purposes to support student learning in CS230, 2025. Portions of the slides are adapted from publicly available course materials hosted by various universities, used here under the educational fair dealing provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.

Head TA:

Others:

  • [Pushpendra Pal] (pushpa@cse.iitb.ac.in)
  • [Sweta]
  • [Siddhesh Harshad Shinde]
  • [Shivam Singh]
  • [Iqbal Shalabi]
  • [Harshit Matta]
  • [Shoaib Ahamed]

Course Outline

The goal of this course is to make students understand, analyze, and appreciate the basic principles, design choices, and trade-offs associated with the field of digital systems and computer architecture. The course will delve into the topics: digital logic gates, combinational and sequential circuits, instruction set architectures, microarchitecture, assembly language, instruction pipelining, pipeline hazards, and memory hierarchy.

Now, why should you take this course? Well, this course is your first step to the world of modern computers (starting from the smart card in your pocket till the data centre of Google) -- how they work, how to use them efficiently, how to make them better, and how to hack them.

Textbooks:

  • Switching and Finite Automata Theory, Zvi Kohavi, Niraj K. Jha, Cambridge University Press, 2009
  • Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach, Fifth or Sixth edition, J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson (H and P), Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., 2019.
  • Computer Organization and Design, The Hardware/Software Interface, Fifth edition, D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy (P and H), Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., 2013.

Grading Policy (Tentative)

  • Quiz : 30 % (2 Quizzes 15% each)
  • Midsem : 30 %
  • Endsem : 40 %

DateLecture TopicPre-reqLecture SlidesReading Material
July 27[L0] Course Prelude, Introduction-pdf-
July 28[L1] Number Systems-pdfKohavi, Jha - Switching and Finite Automata Theory Chapter 1
July 30[L2] Switching Algebra-pdfKohavi, Jha - Switching and Finite Automata Theory Chapter 3
August 3[L3] Logic minimizationL2pdfKohavi, Jha - Switching and Finite Automata Theory Chapter 4