COM SCI M151B
Computer Systems Architecture
Description: (Same as Electrical and Computer Engineering M116C.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisites: courses 33, and M51A or Electrical and Computer Engineering M16. Recommended: courses 111, and M152A or Electrical and Computer Engineering M116L. Computer system organization and design, implementation of CPU datapath and control, instruction set design, memory hierarchy (caches, main memory, virtual memory) organization and management, input/output subsystems (bus structures, interrupts, DMA), performance evaluation, pipelined processors. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
I actually took CS M151A with Ercegovac. The class was really tough, so it's hard to attribute the difficulty to the course material, his teaching, or a combination of both. I don't think any professor could make this class easy. Milos was a super nice professor, and although I never went to office hours he seemed very willing to help students; I think he would have been very encouraging and helpful if I had gone to him for help with the class. It helps a lot to read the book before class. The lectures are basically a lighter version of the textbook (since he wrote it), and if you go in with an idea of what to expect the information he gives out is much more helpful. If you attend lecture without reading the textbook beforehand (like I did for about the last half of the quarter), the lectures are much more difficult to follow. The book isn't very exciting but it's straightforward. I'd recommend him.
I actually took CS M151A with Ercegovac. The class was really tough, so it's hard to attribute the difficulty to the course material, his teaching, or a combination of both. I don't think any professor could make this class easy. Milos was a super nice professor, and although I never went to office hours he seemed very willing to help students; I think he would have been very encouraging and helpful if I had gone to him for help with the class. It helps a lot to read the book before class. The lectures are basically a lighter version of the textbook (since he wrote it), and if you go in with an idea of what to expect the information he gives out is much more helpful. If you attend lecture without reading the textbook beforehand (like I did for about the last half of the quarter), the lectures are much more difficult to follow. The book isn't very exciting but it's straightforward. I'd recommend him.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Absolutely horrible class. The homeworks are way too difficult and uncomprehendable, so you cant even get a normal basic understanding of the course material. HW is graded 1 to 3 subjectively, so you can't even really know if you're doing well on the HW since there is no rubric! Absolutely horrible, if you can avoid this professor, please do so. Take Reinman, who is actually an amazing professor. Horrible class, Avoid this class if you can.
Spring 2020 - Absolutely horrible class. The homeworks are way too difficult and uncomprehendable, so you cant even get a normal basic understanding of the course material. HW is graded 1 to 3 subjectively, so you can't even really know if you're doing well on the HW since there is no rubric! Absolutely horrible, if you can avoid this professor, please do so. Take Reinman, who is actually an amazing professor. Horrible class, Avoid this class if you can.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - As of writing, Blase Tine has a 4.0 with 3 reviews, truthfully, I have no idea why. Heres the good: Assignments are done in partners which you pick, they're generally easy C++ assignments, but make sure you take multiple days to do them, I'd estimate every project to be like 30% coding, 70% debugging *very* little things. Though generally, you can expect full score on the assignments/projects. Homeworks are given in weekly quizzes that aren't too difficult? Though this varies depending on the TA that helps during discussion sections. Heres the bad: Don't expect to rely on the lecture recordings, half of the 19 lectures this quarter were either muted, or just non-existent. As a 4th year undergrad, this course's exams might genuinely be some of the worst exams I've ever taken. Our midterm was done on laptops in class (though you literally could have done it at home, nobody would have noticed at all), and I am quite confident there were many people actively cheating driving the average grade higher than it should have been. Our final was on paper, and... wow. To go into specifics, the lecture and homework content felt *extremely* different from content on the final exam. The professor said it was to test our 'understanding' rather than memorization. Which.. I guess? I literally read the entire textbook even the parts you don't need to, did each homework three times, all suggested discussion practice problems, wrote the formulas, brought them to the final, and they were all basically useless. I don't even know why I read the textbook anymore. I caught multiple people outright weeping during the final, which does at least make my horrible score (not yet graded) feel at least a little bit better. Please. Find someone else. The exams are absolutely ruthless, and you're basically playing coinflip on the curve for your GPA. If you're not into masochism then don't take this course. (Also to those who didn't like Operating Systems [CS111], this class is basically OS 2 electric boogaloo)
Winter 2025 - As of writing, Blase Tine has a 4.0 with 3 reviews, truthfully, I have no idea why. Heres the good: Assignments are done in partners which you pick, they're generally easy C++ assignments, but make sure you take multiple days to do them, I'd estimate every project to be like 30% coding, 70% debugging *very* little things. Though generally, you can expect full score on the assignments/projects. Homeworks are given in weekly quizzes that aren't too difficult? Though this varies depending on the TA that helps during discussion sections. Heres the bad: Don't expect to rely on the lecture recordings, half of the 19 lectures this quarter were either muted, or just non-existent. As a 4th year undergrad, this course's exams might genuinely be some of the worst exams I've ever taken. Our midterm was done on laptops in class (though you literally could have done it at home, nobody would have noticed at all), and I am quite confident there were many people actively cheating driving the average grade higher than it should have been. Our final was on paper, and... wow. To go into specifics, the lecture and homework content felt *extremely* different from content on the final exam. The professor said it was to test our 'understanding' rather than memorization. Which.. I guess? I literally read the entire textbook even the parts you don't need to, did each homework three times, all suggested discussion practice problems, wrote the formulas, brought them to the final, and they were all basically useless. I don't even know why I read the textbook anymore. I caught multiple people outright weeping during the final, which does at least make my horrible score (not yet graded) feel at least a little bit better. Please. Find someone else. The exams are absolutely ruthless, and you're basically playing coinflip on the curve for your GPA. If you're not into masochism then don't take this course. (Also to those who didn't like Operating Systems [CS111], this class is basically OS 2 electric boogaloo)
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