Grading
- 20% HW: 10 Canvas quizzes, one per week, with 8-10 questions each. Very easy especially if you cross-check answers with other students.
- 35% Projects: 3 C++ projects covering different parts of a RISC-V CPU pipeline implementation. You work on these in groups of 2 and they were generally very straightforward compared to projects in other classes (especially after going to TA office hours and the like).
- 20% Midterm: Reasonable based on the homework and projects but still difficult as a lot of the questions relied on exact numerical accuracy. Closed notes, taken in-class but on Gradescope. IIRC this exam had around a 65% average.
- 20% Final: Hellish. Open-note pencil and paper exam despite the syllabus stating that the format would be the same as the midterm. Also, while the professor specified that the final would focus on the latter half of the course, at least half of the exam (if not more) was dependent on you remembering all of the pre-midterm content to a T. 55% average. I would definitely rank this among the most difficult finals I've had in my 4 years as a CS student.
- 5% participation: You scan a QR code at the beginning of each lecture to sign in (different login code each time). You can leave after the first 5 minutes if you'd like. Campuswire participation counts as well.

The professor didn't respond to at least 2-3 emails I sent him over the quarter and very rarely responded to Campuswire questions (despite that being a primary form of communication in the class). In addition, despite promising a curve to offset the low exam averages, the only real curve we got was the final being graded out of 18 points instead of 20 (so the average was an 11/18 instead of 11/20. Oh joy).

The provided lecture slides were generally pretty clear; however, recorded lectures were somewhat difficult to follow considering that at least a third to half of them had no audio and often times froze towards the end of the recording. The professor's handwriting is unfortunately not legible enough to make out what he's writing when unaccompanied by a spoken explanation.

Anyways, please don't take this class. I was baited by the 4.0 rating from three students last year and it should tell you something that the current rating is a 2.2 from 11 students. Communication was basically nonexistent throughout the quarter and the final hit us all out of nowhere (i.e. practice questions and homework were nowhere near as difficult).

Please take this class with another professor.