Extended Syllabus
(2025 Spring Semester)
Introduction to Course
Course Title AIE3054-01
Computer Systems Number
Enrollment Sophomore (2nd-year) and
Credit 3.0
Eligibility Junior (3rd-year)
Tuesday and Thursday
Meeting Times Classroom TBD
(13:30 ~ 14:45)
Homepage:
Instructor: Prof. Euhyun Moon
https://gordonmoon.github.io
Email: [email protected] Telephone: 02-705-8487
Office: AS 813
Office Hours: Tu Th 11:00 ~ 13:00 or by appointment
TA: Sangwon Bae
TA Office Hours: TBD
I. Course Overview
1. Description
This course provides basic concepts of how computer systems execute programs, store data,
and communicate. The topics covered in this course include bit-level representations,
machine-level assembly language programming, memory organization and management, code
optimization, and specialized architectures and systems.
2. Prerequisites
This course assumes that students are already familiar with the concepts of C programming
language. If you have any questions about the prerequisites for this course, don’t hesitate to
reach out to the instructor.
3. Course Format (%)
Lecture Discussion Experiment/Practicum Field study Presentations Other
100 % % % % % %
1
4. Evaluation (%)
Mid
Final
term Quizzes Presentations Projects Assignments Participation Other
exam
exam
35 % 35 % % % % 30 % % %
II. Course Objectives
Upon course completion, students can be expected to:
• Be competent with fundamental concepts of computer systems – understand
architectural characteristics of computers which directly affect performance of program
• Be able to find and eliminate bugs in the program efficiently
• Be able to improve the quality and performance of program
• Be prepared for other systems courses, such as Compilers, Operating Systems,
Networks, Computer Architecture, Parallel and Distributed Computing, and Embedded
Systems
III. Course Format
In each week, we will hold two classes: Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00am to 10:15am
IV. Course Requirements and Grading Criteria
The final course grade will be based on a composite score computed according to the
following breakdown:
Midterm exam 35%
Final exam 40%
Programming assignments 25%
Both midterm and final exams are in-class exam covering all course content to date.
The programming assignments are graded according to the following scale and expectations,
with scores then converted to a percentage equivalent on a scale specific to and provided with
each assignment.
2
Project grade Requirements
professional quality, correct and documented code, brief well-
10 substantiated conclusions, thoughtful and neatly completed, correctly
submitted
essentially correct in all aspects, lacking in quality of arguments or
8
submission
6 contains one or two minor errors or omissions of key concepts
4 contains one significant or multiple minor errors or omissions
2 lacking multiple significant components
0 work not submitted
V. Course Policies
General policies:
• Following instructions are graded part of all assignments
• All exams are closed book, closed notes
Lectures and Attendance:
• Attendance is required for all students.
• Please get to know your classmates. Should you miss a lecture, it is your responsibility
to review that material with someone who is willing to share their notes with you and
then bring follow-up questions to office hours. It is your responsibility to ensure you
have all course materials.
Exams:
• The midterm will be held during a regularly scheduled course lecture meeting time,
thus there should be no scheduling conflicts. The midterm may not be taken early and
may not be made up.
• The final exam will be held during the time slot scheduled by the university, thus there
should be no scheduling conflicts. The final exam may not be taken early and may not
be made up.
• Exams are due at the end of the examination period as announced by the instructor.
Continuing to work on your exam after the examination period has ended may result in
your work being considered late and a reduction in your score, up to and including
receiving a score of 0 for the exam.
• In the event of an unavoidable unanticipated absence from an exam, the student should
notify the instructor as soon as possible.
Electronic Media:
• Students are responsible for being aware of any announcements made via Cyber
Campus or email.
3
• When communicating with your instructor via email, please be sure to include your
name, class and section.
Programming Assignments:
• Programming assignments will be assigned via posting to the Cyber Campus
(https://cyber.sogang.ac.kr) in the “Assignments” section.
• All programming assignments must be submitted/uploaded to the Cyber Campus in the
“Assignments” section.
• All programming assignments are individual exercises. The work submitted by a
student is expected to be that student own original work.
• Copying the source code of another student is not allowed. Such a violation may result
in academic penalties. For the first occurrence, you will receive a zero and reduction in
one letter grade (e.g., AàB, BàC). For the second occurrence, you will receive an "F"
in this course.
• It is expected that students are either proficient in C or have sufficient programming
background and experience to become proficient through self-study.
• Office hours are not for general program development. Office hours should be used for
specific design questions or debugging specific issues.
• Programming assignments will be accepted past the due date and time according to the
following penalty:
24 hours late -20%
• No late homework will be accepted after 24 hours from the due date, please plan
accordingly.
Academic Integrity:
• It is expected in this course that students are familiar with the academic integrity
guidelines of Sogang University as defined by the Office of Academic Administration.
• It is expected that students will only turn in work that is their own, or the work of team
to which they have been assigned for a given specific assignment.
• It is expected that students will neither seek nor receive any form of aid, other than
from the instructor or proctor, during any exam or quiz.
• In the event that there occurs reasonable doubt about the integrity of any student’s
work, then that student and said work will be referred to the Committee on Academic
Misconduct for adjudication.
VI. Materials and References
Lecture slides will be posted to Cyber Campus (https://cyber.sogang.ac.kr), but are not
intended to replace the textbook nor the lectures themselves. Please use the slides as a medium
to organize your course notes and as study aids.
Textbook:
4
Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective,
3rd Edition, Pearson, 2016.
VII. Course Schedule
Learning
Introduction to Computer Systems
Objectives
Topics Overview of Computer Systems
Class Work
Lecture
Week 1 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Bits, Bytes, and Integers I
Objectives
Topics Representing information as bits, Bit-level manipulation
Class Work
Lecture
Week 2 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Bits, Bytes, and Integers II
Objectives
Topics Integers, Byte order in memory, pointers, strings
Class Work
Lecture
Week 3 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming I: Basics
Objectives
Intel processors and architectures, Assembly basics, Arithmetic
Week 4 Topics
and logical operations, C, assembly and machine code
Class Work
Lecture
(Methods)
5
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming II: Control
Objectives
Topics Control flow, Condition, Conditional operations, Loops
Class Work
Lecture
Week 5 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming III: Procedures
Objectives
Topics Stack structure, Calling conventions
Class Work
Lecture
Week 6 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming III: Procedures
Objectives
Topics Register Saving Conventions, Recursion
Class Work
Lecture
Week 7 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Midterm Exam
Objectives
Week 8 Topics
Class Work
(Methods)
6
Materials
(Required
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming IV: Data
Objectives
Topics One-dimensional arrays, Multi-dimensional arrays, Structs
Class Work
Lecture
Week 9 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Machine-Level Programming V: Buffer Overflows
Objectives
Topics Memory layouts, Buffer overflow
Class Work
Lecture
Week 10 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Memory & Caches
Objectives
Memory abstraction, RAM, Locality of reference, Memory
Topics
hierarchy, Storage technologies
Class Work
Lecture
Week 11 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Caches I
Objectives
Week 12 Topics Cache memory organization and operation
Class Work
Lecture
(Methods)
7
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Caches II
Objectives
Topics Performance impact of caches
Class Work
Lecture
Week 13 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Code Optimization
Objectives
Topics Compiler optimization, Machine-dependent optimization
Class Work
Lecture
Week 14 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Review and makeup class
Objectives
Topics
Class Work
Lecture
Week 15 (Methods)
Materials
(Required Lecture slides and textbook
Readings)
Assignments
Learning
Final Exam
Objectives
Week 16 Topics
Class Work
(Methods)
8
Materials
(Required
Readings)
Assignments
VIII. Special Accommodations
IX. Aid for the Challenged Students
If you have a disability that may affect your success in this course and wish to discuss
academic accommodations, please arrange a meeting with the instructor on the first day of
class.
