Before you get started
This class requires you to do a LOT of work between homeworks (5), labs (7) -- of which a few are quite difficult,
reading assignments, a class presentation, and two exams.
Grading is quite strict as well, in that failure to get a passing grade in, say, any of the labs will earn
you a failing grade in this class. Put it another way, you cannot get around all the work by just skipping assignments.
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Class participation will help settle borderline grades. While class attendance is not taken, your instructor believes
that regular class attendance is important and expects students to actively participate in class. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Late Work
All work that you turn in must be submitted on the Blackboard before
midnight (Central Time) the day the work is due.
I understand that from time to time you'll get overwhelmed with work, or that you may have personal
problems that will make you less productive than you'd like. That's why each student in this class
has a credit of five (5) days for late work.
You can use this credit as you see fit, for good reason or no reason at all, all at once or in pieces -- though
there is no fractional credit. The only thing we ask for is that, in your Blackboard submission (in the COMMENT
field) you indicate how much of your credit you want to use.
After you've used your "late work credit", or if you don't want to use it, there is a 5% per calendar day
penalty for late work.
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Academic Honesty
All the work you submit must be individual, including, but not limited to, those cases when
your instructor has approved pair-programming for you; in these cases the only thing that may be
identical with somebody else's is code.
Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. IIT has a strict academic honesty policy; here are the top points:
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The misrepresentation of any work submitted for credit as the product of a student’s sole
independent effort, such as using the ideas of others without attribution and other forms of plagiarism.
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The use of any unauthorized assistance in taking quizzes, tests or examinations.
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The acquisition, without permission, of tests, answer sheets, problem solutions or other
academic material when such material has been withheld from distribution by the instructor.
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Deliberate harmful obstruction of the studies, research or academic work of any member of
the IIT community.
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Making material misrepresentation in any submission to or through any office of the university to a
potential employer, professional society, meeting or organization.
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The intentional assistance of others in the violation of the standards for academic honest.
You can read the entire policy in the
Student Handbook.
You should read the academic honesty policy until you fully understand it.
A good way to test whether you understand it is to try to explain it to somebody else.
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Labs
A number of simulators will be used for your labs, such as SPIM (a MIPS32 simulator), dinero (a Trace-Driven Uniprocessor
Cache Simulator), and CAMERA (a memory tutorial software package that you can download
here).
Your textbook comes with better SPIM documentation than the one in the original SPIM distribution. You can find the
documentation on the companion CD, under the Tutorials. For your convenience the same documentation is also available
below:
You are required to install the SPIM on your own computer and become familiar with using it.
You can download the software and get additional information about the simulator from the
official SPIM web page.
Each lab is structured in three parts, pre-lab -- this is work you do at home to become familiar with the topic,
in-lab -- work you during the lab session when you can get help from the TA -- and post-lab, work which you do on your
own, have to turn in and will be graded for.
Class Presentations
The purpose of this section is for students to do some independent research work and present their findings to the class.
No later than 9/20/11, each student must choose a topic for the class presentation. Your topic must be
approved by your instructor.
Submit your request via email to your class instructor. Topic requests will be honored on a FIFO basis.
As a general rule, the sooner you submit the request, the more time you'll have to prepare it.
A draft of the presentation is due on 10/25/11; a penalty of 10% will be assigned if you fail to submit your
draft presentation or if you submit it late. There are two purposes to this:
- Make sure you're on track with your work.
- Select the most promising presentations for live presentations; that's primarily of concern for your teacher.
Should you fail to deliver a draft of your presentation by the due date, you'll get penalized 10% in your final grade for the
presentation.
The draft presentation must be substantive, i.e. it should show you've spent enough time
researching the presentation topic in order to have a good idea about what needs to go in and what
needs to stay out. If the draft presentation is deemed to not be substantive by your instructor,
then you'll get a 10% penalty on your presentation.
Your presentation must include notes for each slide, which notes include the detail related to each
slide; if you prefer, you can produce a separate document that includes the detail of your presentation.
If the notes you provide for your presentation are deemed to not be substantive by your instructor,
then you'll get a 10% penalty on your presentation.
Allocate significant time to survey the computer architecture topic you have selected. Do not wait
until a few days before the presentation is due, chances are that if you do so, then you'll run out of
time and will end up with a very poor mark in this section.
Presentations will be limited to 20' and will be followed by Q&A up to a total of 30'.
Grading will consider both the content and the way the presentation is made to the class. Your class peers will
participate in the grading process and their opinion accounts for 40% of your mark, unless you are one of
the students who submits the topic late and/or you cannot be physically present in class for a live presentation.
If you are a student whose presentation hasn't been selected for one of the live presentations sessions or a
student who takes the class remotely and cannot attend a live presentation, then you will have to record your
presentation as if you were giving it in front of your peers and turn in a .mpeg movie together with all the
other deliverables for the class presentation. Your presentation is due on the first day of student
presentations as outlined in the Class Schedule.
In the movie we'll want to see:
- Your face, at least in the beginning and at the end of the presentation
- Slides
- Synchronized sound
The presentation must be very well rehearsed; failure to properly prepare for the presentation will
result in an extremely poor mark on the presentation.
The following grading sheets will be used for your class presentation.
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