REQUEST FOR ACTION BY THE ENGINEERING CURRICULUM COMMITTEE
Academic Year 2006-2007
___________________________________________________________________________________________
This form should be sent to the Chair of the Engineering Curriculum Committee (Alva Couch, Halligan 246, email:
Alva.Couch@tufts.edu), at least two weeks before a regularly scheduled meeting of the Committee. To expedite the
review process, please provide both a signed paper copy of the form and an electronic version of the document,
preferably via electronic mail to Alva.Couch@tufts.edu.
If credit is desired in either Natural Science or Mathematical Science distribution area in Liberal Arts, one must obtain
separate approval from the Academic Review Board(ARB). Please forward the course description to Fulton Gonzalez
(Mathematics), chair of the ARB (Email: Fulton.Gonzalez@tufts.edu).
A copy should also be sent to the Collection Management Librarian of Tisch Library
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Name
_Soha Hassoun_____________
Department __Computer Science________
Extension
__75177__________________
Date
__February 13, 2007_______________
Please circle or underline appropriate line(s)
(1)
Offer a new course or program that will be considered by the faculty.
(2)
Change the number of a course.
(3)
Change the title of a course.
(4)
Change the wording of a course or program description.
(5)
Other. ___________________________________________________
This request has been approved by the faculty of:
_________________________________________
Department
_________________________________________
Signature of Department Chair
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On this page or on attached pages, please describe changes, rationale, and resources required to
implement the proposed changes.
1.
New course or other requested changes. Please give department designation, course
number, course title, and new Bulletin description. Note that the description should be
about four printed lines and written in Bulletin language. For other requested changes,
please give old designation, course number, course title, and old course description;
follow this with a description of the requested changes. Attach additional pages if needed.
COMP140 Advanced Computer Architecture. Elements of modern computer architectures,
including instruction pipelining, memory hierarchy, instruction-level parallelism, threading, and
multi-core processors. Architectural issues related to software optimization. Architectural
design decisions and how they affect operating systems and compilers. Quantitative analysis
and evaluation of modern computing systems, including selection of appropriate benchmarks to
reveal and compare the performance of alternative design choices in system design. Prerequisite:
Comp40. Hassoun.
2.
Please describe the rationale and impact of the proposed changes and/or for offering
the new course or courses. Indicate ways in which proposed changes affect existing or
proposed programs of study both within and outside your department. When appropriate,
indicate relationships between changes and practices at peer institutions, as well as
relevance to School of Engineering strategic plans.
This is an important topic in Computer Science that prepares students for industry and graduate
studies in Computer Systems. Our course will enable graduate students to take a qualifying exam
in the area of computer architecture. This course is similar to graduate courses in Computer
Architecture offered at other institutions such as University of CA at Berkeley, University of
Washington, Seattle, CMU, and Brown University.
COMP 140 is different from EE215 (Computer Architecture and Organization), and EE216
(Advanced Topics in Computer Architecture). There are salient differences:
1) COMP 140 examines hardware optimizations from a software perspective and how it
relates to operating systems and compilers. The EE courses are more focused on the
hardware issues.
2) The topics covered are different. COMP140 addresses three main issues: Instruction
Level Parallelism, Threading, and multi-core processors, EE 215 is focused on ALU
function, control structures, hard-wire control, microprogramming, and bit slice
architectures. None of these topics will be covered in COMP 140. EE216 is focused on
array and parallel processors, parallel processing algorithms, and parallel programming
languages. None of the proposed material for COMP 140 covers any parallel processing.
3) Both EE215 and EE 216 require EE 26 as a prerequisite. COMP140 requires COMP 40,
which is Computer Organization from a software perspective
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3.
Please describe the resources required to implement the proposed changes, including
plans for how these resources will be obtained. Include expected enrollments, class sizes,
expected numbers of sections, and frequency of offering for each class. Describe
modifications required in your department’s curriculum or instructor’s regular course
offerings to make the proposed changes possible. Identify whether required funding for
resources is pending and/or dependent upon external grants. Where possible, compare
resource requirements to existing requirements before the proposed changes.
We expect to teach this course annually or every two years, with a class size of 6-10 students. No
funding is required to teach this course.
________________________________________________________________________
Please fill out the attached Library Impact Study form if: (a) you are requesting that a
new course be included in the curriculum or (b) you anticipate the need for substantial
new library resources as a result of changes in the description of your course.
________________________________________________________________________
TUFTS UNIVERSITY ARTS AND SCIENCES LIBRARY
LIBRARY IMPACT STATEMENTFOR UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
Please furnish the information requested below and return this form to: Collection Management
Librarian, Arts and Sciences Library, Tisch. (The Arts and Sciences Librarian is an ex officio
member of the Committee on Curricula.)
1.
Department or Program______Copmuter Science_______________________
2.
Title of course
3.
Suggested department course number ___COMP 140_________________________
4.
Course will first be offered
5.
Instructor(s)
Advanced Computer Architecture
___Fall 2008__________
___Soha Hassoun______________________________________
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_____________________________________________________
6.
Campus telephone number
__7 5177______________________
7.
Anticipated enrollment
___8__________________________
8.
Open to undergraduates
__yes_________________________
graduates
__yes_________________________
9.
This course is primarily dependent on:
Text
Library resources
10.
__yes__
__on-line searches for research papers
Brief description of topics to be covered
The course covers instruction level parallelism, memory hierarchies, thread-level parallelism, mutli-core processors,
and network-oriented interconnections. The course also covers techniques of quantitative analysis and evaluation of
modern computing systems, such as the selection of appropriate benchmarks to reveal and compare the performance
of alternative design choices in system design.
11.
Description of any additional library resources needed to support this course.
We hope that the library will continue supporting access to ACM and IEEE journal and
conference publications.
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