Teaching Material

I take some pride in providing decent teaching material, but my preferred approach means you need to keep a few things in mind when using them:

• Since I teach (or have taught) a variety of units which are on one hand diverse but on the other hand related, overlap occurs. When the overlap is significant, I don't try to create different sets of materials for different units: I use one set.
• Where I have previously developed some material which is now deemed extraneous (for whatever reason), I still include it; usually this takes the form of a section marked "extra" (or "an aside" or similar). To cope with this, I've provided a core set of slides used in lecture and an extended set of notes for printing and further reading.

The advantage of this approach is that I can more easily keep the material consistent and up to date; the disadvantage is that the material is overly detailed in places, and might include detail you don't need to worry about. I will always point this issue out when covering the material in a lecture, and ensure that a definitive, clear syllabus is available to aid revision: if I skip over the "extra" material in a lecture this is usually by design, not (always) because I'm lazy or have run out of time!

"Computer Architecture Theme" (e.g., COMS12700, COMS12600)

(related material also available via a book)

• Mathematical preliminaries:
  • Boolean algebra [ slides | notes ].
  • Representation (mainly of numbers) [ slides | notes ].
• Basics of digital logic:
  • Transistors and fabrication [ slides | notes ].
  • Logic gates [ slides | notes ].
  • Combinatorial logic [ slides | notes ].
  • Sequential logic [ slides | notes ].
  • Pipelined circuits [ slides | notes ].
  • Hardware testing and debugging strategies [ slides | notes ].
• Basics of computer arithmetic:
  • Circuits for addition and subtraction [ slides | notes ].
  • Circuits for shift and rotate [ slides | notes ].
  • Circuits for multiplication [ slides | notes ].
  • Circuits for comparison [ slides | notes ].
• Basics of memory and storage:
  • The memory heirarchy [ slides | notes ].
  • Main memory (inc. SRAM, DRAM, etc.) [ slides | notes ].
  • Cache memory [ slides | notes ].
• Introductory Verilog:
  • Structural Modelling [ slides | notes ].
  • Behavioural Modelling [ slides | notes ].
  • Practicalities [ slides | notes ].
• Basics of processor design:
  • A functional overview of program execution [ slides | notes ].
  • Data- and control-paths [ slides | notes ].
  • Addressing modes [ slides | notes ].
  • Instruction sets [ slides | notes ].
  • Control-flow [ slides | notes ].
  • Measuring "quality" [ slides | notes ].
• Worksheets:
  • Basics of digital logic [ questions | solutions ].
  • Boolean minimisation [ questions | solutions ]
  • Basics of computer arithmetic [ questions | solutions ].
  • Basics of memory and storage [ questions | solutions ].
  • Introductory Verilog [ questions | solutions ].
  • Basics of processor design [ questions | solutions ].
  • Advanced processor design [ questions | solutions ].

"Theory Theme" (e.g., COMS21103)

• Implementation techniques:
  • "Bare metal" programming [ slides | notes ].
  • Specialisation (and friends) [ slides | notes ].
  • Refactoring algrorithmic constructs [ slides | notes ].
  • Caches and buffers (and friends) [ slides | notes ].
  • Latency hiding (mainly without buffers) [ slides | notes ].
  • "Micro" data structures [ slides | notes ].
• High Performance Computing (HPC):
  • OpenMP [ slides | notes ].
  • MPI [ slides | notes ].
  • Sorting [ slides | notes ].
• Examples (or case-studies):
  • PageRank [ slides | notes ].
  • MapReduce [ slides | notes ].
  • Chess [ slides | notes ].
• Worksheets:
  • Implementation techniques [ questions | solutions ].

"Security Theme" (e.g., COMS30901, COMS30002, COMSM0007)

(related material also available via a book)

• Implementing cryptographic arithmetic:
  • Multi-precision integer arithmetic [ slides | notes ].
  • Modular arithmetic (large prime) [ slides | notes ].
  • Exponentiation (and scalar multiplication) [ slides | notes ].
• Symmetric primitives:
  • DES [ slides | notes ].
  • AES [ slides | notes ].
• Asymmetric primitives:
  • ECC: Fundamentals [ slides | notes ].
  • ECC: Security considerations [ slides | notes ].
  • RSA: Fundamentals [ slides | notes ].
  • RSA: Security considerations [ slides | notes ].
• Physical security:
  • Buffer overflows [ slides | notes ].
• Protocols and schemes:
  • SSL/TLS (in a nutshell) [ slides | notes ].
  • Using elliptic curves for cryptography [ slides | notes ].
• Examples (or case-studies):
  • Bug attacks on OpenSSL 0.9.8g [ slides | notes ].
  • Cache attacks on OpenSSL-like servers [ slides | notes ].
  • Cryptography in video games [ slides | notes ].
• Worksheets:
  • Symmetric primitives: [ questions | solutions ].
  • Aymmetric primitives: [ questions | solutions ].
  • Physical security: [ questions | solutions ].
  • Procotols and schemes: [ questions | solutions ].
  • Pseudo-random number generation: [ questions | solutions ].