ECE 5755/CS 5754: Modern Computer Architecture and Systems (Fall 2025)
Description
This graduate level course is designed to provide a hardware-centric overview of computer systems used in modern computing platforms. From the bottom up we will study the architecture of processor architectures (e.g., pipelined CPUs, ISA, RISC vs. CISC, out-of-order execution) and memory systems (e.g., memory hierarchy, caching, DRAM memories). We will understand how to evaluate the performance of modern processors and exploit parallelism in applications. This includes parallelization across multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and specialized hardware. Through hands-on assignments and an open-ended project students will develop a holistic understanding of modern computer systems and how they are designed.
Logistics
- Room: Bloomberg Center 61 (Cornell Tech)
- Time: Mondays and Wednesdays at 4:20pm - 5:35pm
- Please read the syllabus
- Canvas link
- Ed Discussions
Course Staff
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Udit Gupta (Professor) | Yuzong Chen (Head TA) |
Office Hours
- Professor: Mondays 3-4pm, Bloomberg 268
- TA (Yuzong Cheng): Thursdays 11am-12pm, Master’s Studio
Schedule
| Date | Day | Topic | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 25 | Mon | Introduction to Architecture and Systems | |
| Aug 27 | Wed | Instruction Set Architectures | |
| Sep 1 | Mon | Labor day (No class) | |
| Sep 3 | Wed | Processors | |
| Sep 8 | Mon | Pipelined Processors | |
| Sep 10 | Wed | Pipelined Processors 2 | Quiz 1 |
| Sep 15 | Mon | Speculation | |
| Sep 17 | Wed | Out of order execution | |
| Sep 22 | Mon | Memory Hierarchy | Quiz 2 |
| Sep 24 | Wed | Memory Hierarchy II | |
| Sep 29 | Mon | Caching I | |
| Oct 1 | Wed | Caching II | |
| Oct 6 | Mon | Virtual Memory | |
| Oct 8 | Wed | DRAM | |
| Oct 13 | Mon | Fall Break (No class) | |
| Oct 15 | Wed | Multi-core | |
| Oct 20 | Mon | Cache Coherence | |
| Oct 22 | Mon | Cache Coherence | Quiz |
| Oct 27 | Mon | Memory Consistency | |
| Oct 29 | Wed | Memory Consistency | |
| Nov 3 | Mon | GPU’s | Quiz |
| Nov 5 | Wed | GPU’s & Heterogeneous Computing | |
| Nov 10 | Mon | In lab exercise | |
| Nov 12 | Wed | In lab exercise | Quiz |
| Nov 17 | Mon | Heterogeneous Computing | |
| Nov 19 | Wed | Datacenters | |
| Nov 24 | Mon | Datacenters | |
| Nov 26 | Wed | Thanksgiving (no class) | |
| Dec 1 | Mon | Group Presentations I | |
| Dec 3 | Wed | Group Presentations II | |
| Dec 8 | Mon | Group Presentations III |