ECE 222 Digital Computers (Fall 2025)

 

Overview

The objective of this course is to learn how computer works, focusing on how the computer hardware executes the software. General topics covered in this course: computer abstractions, instruction sets, assembly language programming, processor design, memory system design, and input/output. Prereq: ECE 124 & CS 137 (or equivalent)

 

Instructor

Ziqiang Patrick Huang <ziqiang.huang@uwaterloo.ca>

 

Office Hours

  • My office: E7-5424
  • Monday 11:30 - 12:20 or by appointment
  • Different hours will be announced for midterm week and the exam period

Lab Instructor

Mahmoud AL Saad <m4alsaad@uwaterloo.ca>

 

Teaching Assistants

Leroy D'Souza <l8dsouza@uwaterloo.ca>
Mahdi Hassen <mhassen@uwaterloo.ca>
Md Rezwanul Haque <mr3haque@uwaterloo.ca>
John Kim<j823kim@uwaterloo.ca>
Saifuddeen Boghdady <sboghdad@uwaterloo.ca>
 

TA Office Hours

 

Our TA office hours rotate with the lab schedule:
  • During Lab Weeks: Students should come to their scheduled lab sessions for questions. No additional office hours will be held. 
  • During Non-Lab Weeks: Tutorial slots will be used as TA office hours, and the location will be in the lab room.

Lectures, tutorials, labs

For lecture, tutorial and lab schedules, see the Undergraduate Schedule of Classes. Labs are mandatory. Tutorials are used to 1) hold  TA office hours 2) explain problem sets to help prepare for exams.

 

Makeup Lectures (Section 001 (ECE) only. Section 002 (SE) doesn't have makeup lecture slots)

Whether makeup lectures will be used will depend on the pace of the course. Students will be notified (in class & through emails) beforehand if we intend to use any of them.

 

Discussion Forum

We will use Piazza for class discussions. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TAs, the lab instructor and myself. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, you should post your questions on Piazza. The Piazza course site is here

 

Textbook (Optional)

Hennessy and Patterson. “Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, RISC-V Edition" Second Edition, (Not the MIPS or ARM edition)

 

Assessment

Quizzes: 5%
Labs: 25%
Midterm: 25%
Final: 45%
 

Quizzes

There will be 5 quizzes designed as low-stakes assessments to help you keep up with the course content. Each quiz covers the previous two weeks of material.

  • Logistics: Quizzes are administered on LEARN. Each quiz has approximately 10 multiple-choice/true/false questions and must be completed in one 60-minute sitting. Quizzes are released at 4pm on Mondays and are due 11pm on Wednesdays. 

  • Permitted Resources: Quizzes are open-book. You are permitted to use your textbook, personal notes, and any materials posted on LEARN.

  • Academic Integrity Rules:
    • Quizzes must be completed individually.
    • No collaboration or communication with any person is allowed during the quiz.
    • The use of any other resources, including online services (e.g., Chegg, Stack Exchange) and AI tools, is strictly prohibited.
    • Quiz questions and content are confidential and must not be shared with anyone.

Labs

Please refer to the lab manual on Learn for details.  
 

Bonus Marks

You may earn up to 1.5 bonus marks in total, which will be added to your final grade. The opportunities are as follows:

  1. Piazza Participation: Earn 0.1 marks for each question/answer endorsed by an instructor on Piazza, up to a maximum of 0.5 marks. (Please keep a record yourself)

  2. Academic Improvement: Earn 0.5 marks if your final exam score is at least 10 percentage points higher than your midterm exam score (e.g., improving from 60% on the midterm to 70% or higher on the final).

  3. Course Feedback: Earn 0.5 marks if the section's overall response rate on the Student Course Perception Survey is 70% or higher. This bonus is awarded to everyone in the section if the target is met.

Late / Missed Content

  • Midterm Exam: With a valid, documented reason for absence, the midterm's weight will be transferred to the final exam. There are no make-up midterms.
  • Final Exam: Students who miss the final exam for a valid, approved reason will receive an INC (Incomplete) grade and will write the exam the next time the course is offered.
  • Quizzes: Late quiz submissions will not be accepted. Deadlines are firm.
  • Lab Work: Please see the lab manual for the specific late policy regarding all lab deliverables.

Use of Generative AI Tools

We believe that the most effective way to learn the course content is by engaging with it without the use of GenAI tools. If at any point you find yourself stuck on an assignment, concept, or anything else related to this course, we encourage you to find our staff on Piazza or office hours. That being said, the use of GenAI tools in this course is permitted with extreme caution. You are permitted to use Generative AI (GenAI) tools as a personal learning aid in this course. For example, you can use them to clarify concepts, explore topics, or generate study questions.
 
However, the use of GenAI to produce any portion of a graded assessment is strictly forbidden and constitutes an academic offense. All work you submit for a grade must be created entirely by you. Submitting content that was generated, written, or significantly altered by an AI tool is a violation of academic integrity. If you are unsure about what is acceptable, it is your responsibility to ask the instructor for clarification.
 
We also believe that GenAI tools are very prone to giving out incorrect answers.  If an GenAI tool gives you information that seems to be wrong, please ask! We are here to support your learning and correct your misconceptions, and course staff is an official source of truth for ECE 222. It's better to ask us and be confident in the reply than to possibly internalize incorrect information after the end of this course.
 

Assignment Screening

Plagiarism detection software such as MOSS (https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/) may be used for lab code.

 

Tentative Course Schedule

 

 
Week Date Lab Tutorial Quizzes Topics Readings from the textbook
1 Sep 3-5 - - -

Logistics, Introduction

Chapter 1

2 Sep 8-12 Lab0 - -

Technology Trends, Metrics, Instruction Set Architecture, Intro to RISC-V

Chapter 2: 2.1 -2.14

3 Sep 15-19 - TA office hours Quiz 1

RISV-V Data Transfer,  Logical Operations

4 Sep 22-26 Lab1 PS 1 -

RISC-V Decision Making, Procedures

5 Sep 29-Oct 3 - TA office hours Quiz 2

Procedures, RISC-V Instruction Formats

6 Oct 6-10 Lab2 PS 2 -

Instruction Formats, Compiling, Assembling, Linking and Loading

7 Oct 13-17 - - -

Reading Week

-
8

Oct 20-24

- - - *Midterm Week -
9

Oct 27-31

- TA office hours Quiz 3

RISC-V Single-cycle Datapath & Control

Chapter 4: 4.1-4.5

10

Nov 3-7

Lab3 PS 3 -

RISC-V 5-stage Pipelining

11

Nov 10-14

- TA office hours Quiz 4 Caches

Chapter 5.1-5.4, 5.7-5.8

12

Nov 17-21

Lab4 PS 4 - Caches
13

Nov 24-28

- PS 5 Quiz 5 Virtual Memory

 

-
14

Dec 1

- TA office hours - Virtual Memory -

 

*Midterm