6.375 Course Information

Spring 2008

Prerequisites Students should feel comfortable programming and using computers (6.001). A rudimentary knowledge of basic logic design (6.004) is assumed. Additional circuit-level (6.002 or 6.374) and architecture-level knowledge (6.823) would be useful but is not essential. As with all project courses the end of term crunch can be a problem, so it would be unwise to take this course with another which also has a significant design project due at the end of the term.
Lectures and Tutorials Lectures will be from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in Room 32-124. Some class sessions are designated as tutorials. In the second half of the term each project team will be expected to meet once per week with the instructors. These meetings will be scheduled during the normal lecture times.
Grades Grades will be based on the labs (30%), one quiz (20%), project milestones (25%), and the final completed project (25%).
Lab Assignments There will be four labs all due before the first quiz. These labs are designed to help you learn the skills you'll need to complete the final project. Some of the labs are probably too long to be done the night before the due date, so plan accordingly. Late labs will not be accepted. See the schedule for details on when labs are due. Feel free to get help from others, but the work you hand in should be your own.
Quizzes There will be one 90 minute quiz on Friday, March 21 in class. The quiz will cover all of the material to date. The quiz is closed book. If exceptional circumstances make it impossible to take the quiz at the scheduled time, please contact the course staff before the quiz to see if other arrangements can be made. Requests for make-ups after the quiz has been given are unlikely to be successful. There is no final exam.
Final Project Projects will be done in groups of 2 to 3 students, and groups will meet with the instructors once each week. Several milestone reports (two to three pages) will be due each Friday following spring break. These milestone reports are (1) Project Proposal, (2) High-level Design and Test Strategy, (3) Detailed Micro-Architectural Design, (4) Design Space Exploration. Final project presentations will take place during the last week of classes. The final report (15 to 20 pages) is due May 15. There are no extensions.
EDP/TQE This course is worth 8 Engineering Design Points (EDPs). See Course VI Undergraduate Programs: Policies, Procedures, and Organization for more information on EDPs. Course 6.375 or course 6.823 (but not both) can satisfy one of your Technical Qualifying Examination (TQE) requirements for the Systems Group. See Graduate Office Memo 3805 for more info on the TQE.
Computer Lab The comptuer lab for this course is 38-301 and it is open 24 hours a day. The lab access code will be given out in class. If you have forgotten the code then please contact the course staff. The lab contains 20+ workstations donated by Intel. The tools can be run out of the course locker on any Athena/Linux machine. See 6.375 Athena Computing Resources for more information on the computing resources available for the class.
Collaboration and
Academic Honesty Policy
Students must not discuss a quiz's contents with other students who have not yet taken the quiz. If prior to taking it, you are inadvertently exposed to material in a quiz - by whatever means - you must immediately inform the instructor or a TA. Collaboration amongst students to understand the course material is strongly encouraged.
Course Reading Material There is no text book for the course. Books and links which would provide useful reference are listed on the resources page.
Computer Communication The TAs and instructors can be reached for questions, comments, etc. via email at 6.375-staff mit edu. Questions which are specific to the Bluespec language or compiler should be directed to bluespec-support mit edu. We will mail all announcements, labs, clarifications to assignments, answers to common questions, etc. to the course email list at 6.375-students mit edu.