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<h2>CIS 4710/5710: Computer Organization and Design <small>Fall 2026</small></h2>
### Course Information
**instructors**: [Gushu Li](https://sites.google.com/view/gushuli) and [Joe Devietti](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~devietti/)
**when**: TR noon-1:30pm
**where**: [AGH 106b](https://facilities.upenn.edu/maps/locations/amygutmannhall)
**contact**: [canvas](https://canvas.upenn.edu/courses/1948223) (has links to Gradescope and Ed Discussions)
**homework**: [github](https://github.com/cis5710/cis5710-homework)
**TAs**:
+ Abhay Agarwal
+ Akshaya Venugopal
+ Arjun Sampath
+ Devanshi Patel
+ Eugene Veksler
+ Grace Liu
+ Justin Yu
+ Kevin Yao
+ Max Veksler
**office hours**
See the Pinned post on Ed Discussions for OH details.
### Course Description
This is a second computer organization course and focuses on computer hardware
design. In this course you will study the design and implementation of modern
CPUs, including pipelined processors, branch prediction, caches, out-of-order
execution, data-parallel architectures and multicore architectures.
### Frequently Asked Questions
* What's the difference between CIS 4710 and CIS 5710?
There is **no** difference in the course content (assignments, exams, etc.)
between CIS 4710 and 5710. If you are a graduate student, however, you'll need to take CIS
5710 as graduate students cannot receive credit for an undergrad course like CIS 4710.
### Prerequisites
Undergraduate students need to have completed CIS 2400.
Graduate students should be familiar with assembly language programming (the
language is not so important, all assembly languages are pretty similar),
digital circuits (muxes, adders, flip-flops and simple sequential circuits),
binary numbers, 2's complement arithmetic, and knowledge of at least one software
programming language.
### Course Materials
The most relevant textbook is *Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach* by Hennessy and Patterson. It is available [for free on-line through the Penn
Library](https://upenn.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurl?institution=01UPENN_INST&vid=01UPENN_INST:Services&%3Fctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi%2Fenc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi%2Ffmt:kev:mtx:book&rft.genre=book&rft.title=Computer%20Architecture&rft.au=Hennessy,%20John%20L&rft.au=Patterson,%20David%20A&rft.date=2011-01-01&rft.pub=Elsevier%20Science%20%26%20Technology&rft.isbn=9780123838735&rft.externalDocID=EBC787253¶mdict=en-us).
The official [RISC-V ISA Specification](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s0lZxUZaa7eV_O0_WsZzaurFLLww7ou5/view?usp=drive_link) and our [RISC-V ISA quick-reference sheet](https://github.com/cis5710/cis5710-homework/blob/main/riscv%20isa%20reference%20sheet.pdf) will also be useful.
### Course Schedule
The course schedule is maintained on our Canvas site.
### Previous Editions
- [CIS 4710/5710, Spring 2026](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2026)
- [CIS 4710/5710, Spring 2025](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2025)
- [CIS 4710/5710, Spring 2024](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2024)
- [CIS 4710/5710, Spring 2023](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2023)
- [CIS 471/571, Spring 2022](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2022)
- [CIS 471/571, Spring 2021](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2021)
- [CIS 371, Spring 2020](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/spring2020)
- [CIS 501, Fall 2019](http://cis.upenn.edu/~cis5710/fall2019)
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