ECE 5755/CS 5754: Modern Computer Architecture and Systems (Fall 2026)
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 91 (Cornell Tech)
- Time: Mondays and Wednesdays at 2:55 - 4:10pm
- Please read the syllabus
- Canvas link
- Ed Discussions
Course Staff
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Udit Gupta (Professor) | Xuesi Chen (Head TA) | Michael Shen |
Office Hours
- Professor: Tuesdays, 1-2pm Bloomberg 268
- TA (Xuesi Chen): Mondays, 430-530pm, MEng Studio
- TA (Michael Shen): Wednesdays, 1-2pm, MEng Studio
Schedule
| Date | Day | Topic | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 24 | Mon | Introduction to Architecture and Systems | |
| Aug 26 | Wed | Instruction Set Architectures | |
| Aug 31 | Mon | Processors | |
| Sep 2 | Wed | Pipelined Processors | |
| Sep 7 | Mon | Labor day (No class) | |
| Sep 9 | Wed | Pipelined Processors 2 | Quiz 1 |
| Sep 14 | Mon | Speculation | |
| Sep 16 | Wed | Out of order execution | |
| Sep 21 | Mon | Memory Hierarchy | |
| Sep 23 | Wed | Memory Hierarchy II | Quiz 2 |
| Sep 28 | Mon | Caching I | |
| Sep 30 | Wed | Caching II | Quiz 3 |
| Oct 5 | Mon | Virtual Memory | |
| Oct 7 | Wed | DRAM | |
| Oct 12 | Mon | Fall Break (No class) | |
| Oct 14 | Wed | Multi-core | |
| Oct 19 | Mon | Cache Coherence | |
| Oct 21 | Wed | Cache Coherence | Quiz 4 |
| Oct 26 | Mon | Memory Consistency | |
| Oct 28 | Wed | Memory Consistency | Quiz 5 |
| Nov 2 | Mon | GPU’s | |
| Nov 4 | Wed | GPU’s & Heterogeneous Computing | |
| Nov 9 | Mon | In lab exercise | Quiz 6 |
| Nov 11 | Wed | In lab exercise | |
| Nov 16 | Mon | Heterogeneous Computing | Quiz 7 |
| Nov 18 | Wed | Datacenters | |
| Nov 23 | Mon | Datacenters | |
| Nov 25 | Wed | Thanksgiving (no class) | |
| Nov 30 | Mon | Group Presentations I | |
| Dec 2 | Wed | Group Presentations II | |
| Dec 7 | Mon | Group Presentations III |