Overview

This unit of study will provide you with an understanding of computer system design, particularly the relationship between hardware and software and how this influences system performance.

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
29-July-2024
27-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
11-August-2024
Census date
31-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
13-September-2024
Results released date
03-December-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Appreciate the range of application of computer systems and their differing performance requirements (K3)
  • Describe the different components of a computer system and their purpose (K2, K3, K6)
  • Appreciate different computer architectures and organizations, and their effect upon operation and performance (K2, K3, S1, S2, S3, A2)
  • Discuss and apply principles used in instruction set design including that for RISC architectures (K2, K3, S1, S2, S3, A2)
  • Describe the use of parallelism in multiple processor systems and the constraints that affect its effectiveness (K2, K3)
  • Determine the role of operating systems and how they interact with, and affect the design of, computer architectures and computer organization (K2, K3)
  • Assess the range of memory and storage technologies that are available, their area of application and their performance characteristics (K2, K3, S1, S2)

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Live Online
Lecture
1.00 6 weeks 6
On-campus
Lecture
1.00 6 weeks 6
Online
Lecture
1.00 12 weeks 12
On-campus
Lab
2.00 12 weeks 24
On-campus
Class
1.00 11 weeks 11
Unspecified Learning Activities (Phasing out)
Independent Learning
7.58 12 weeks 91
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
AssessmentIndividual 40 - 50% 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 
ProjectGroup 50 - 60% 2,3,4,5,7 

Hurdle

As the minimum requirements of assessment to pass a unit and meet all ULOs to a minimum standard, an undergraduate student must have achieved:

(i) An aggregate mark of 50% or more, and(ii) At least 40% in the final Oral Defence. Students who do not successfully achieve hurdle requirement (ii) will receive a maximum of 45% as the total mark for the unit.

Content

  • Fundamentals of computer design
  • Instruction set principles
  • CISC and RISC architectures
  • Pipelining concepts
  • Cache properties and performance
  • Memory-hierarchy design
  • Multiprocessors and thread-level parallelism
  • Storage systems

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.