The overall goal of the course is to enable students to analyze 
and design the structure and function of various components of 
modern computing systems. By the end of the semester, all 
students will be able to do the following:

1. Design a combinational logic circuit using logic gates and 
programmable logic arrays (PLAs) given a functional description. 

2. Design a functional analysis of common combinational logic 
circuits, such as adders, decoders, encoders, multiplexors, 
demultiplexers, and switches/routers. 

3. Design a sequential logic circuit using flip flops and 
combinational logic given a functional description of a finite 
state automaton. 

4. Design and perform functional analysis of common sequential 
logic circuits, such as sequence detectors and counters. 

5. Design memory elements, such as registers and RAM using flip
flops. 

6. Design hierarchical memory using register files, caches, and 
RAM modules. 

7. Analyze the performance of computer systems in terms of 
commonly used metrics, such as CPU execution time, MIPS, MFLOPS, 
power consumption and reliability, and the speedup resulting 
from system optimization using Amdahl’s law. 

8. Analyze the tradeoffs in Instruction Set Architecture design 
using the MIPS assembly language as an example. 

9. Design and analyze algorithms for fixed-point and floating-
point binary arithmetic. 

10. Design and analyze the datapath and CPU control for a subset 
of the MIPS assembly language.

Combinational Logic Design 
Sequential Logic Design 
Hierarchical Memory Design 
Performance Analysis of Computer Systems 
Binary Computer Arithmetic 
Instruction Set Architecture Design 
MIPS Assembly Language Programming using SPIM/XSPIM 
CPU Datapath Design 
CPU Controller Design 
Emerging Trends in Computer Systems Design