Special Topics and Advanced Courses Computer Science
Computer Engineering
Electrical Engineering

Spring 2008

The following is a selection of special topics courses and advanced courses to be be offered by the UMBC CSEE Department for the Spring 2008 semester. Some are cross listed with other departments and programs and some are offered for both undergraduate and graduate credit. Undergraduates can always enroll in a graduate course with the permission of the instructor. For more information on the content, scope or expected workload for any of these courses, please contact the instructor.

CMSC 291V  Anatomy of a Video Game (3 credits)

W 7:10-9:40 p.m.

Katie Hirsch

This class dissects the process of developing a video game from an introductory perspective. The class will give artist and programmers an opportunity to focus on their specific areas of interest within the development pipeline while learning to work across their disciplines. The class will include production and design as well as art and programming specific topics. Prerequisite: CMSC 202 and instructor permission.

CMPE 491/691A  Advanced Computer Arithmetic (3 credits)
T TH 4:00-5:15 p.m.

Dhananjay Phatak

Textbook : None, appropriate material (articles from the literature, web pages...) will be provided.

Topics :
(1) Introduction
(2) CORDIC methods and their applications (trigonometric exponential functions and their inverses, linear algebra: householder transformations...)
(3) Residue number system, Remainder Theorem and its applications
(4) Fast arithmetic for large (cryptographic) wordlengths. Multidigit multiplication methods (karatsuba to schoenhage-strassen FFT based multiply). modular exponentiation, RSA crypto system, Montgomery Modular Multiplication. The following topics in multi-digit-multiplication will be covered depending on time available and student interest (Number TheoritcTransforms (NTT) and Naussbaumer Convolution).
(5) Ultrawide datapath
(6) Redundant Datapath
(7) Redundancy as a fundamental enabling attribute:redundancy bolsters speed. how can we exploit the same redundancy (or only a bit of extra redundancy over and above what is needed for high speed arithmetic) for SECURITY.
(8) Other special topic likely to be covered : Integer factoring (RSA cryptsystem): heuristic and other methods (the goal is to implement Quadratic Seive).Number Field Sieve might be mentioned/introduced.

CMSC 491/691S Social Web Technologies (3 credits)

W 7:10-8:25 p.m.

Harry Chen

This course will introduce technologies that power Web 2.0 services, a new wave of web-based applications that are highly interactive, conversational and participatory. Students will learn how social web technologies can improve people's productivity and how to develop Web 2.0 applications using popular web programming languages and tools, including Java, JavaScript, XML, JSON, and Google Maps API. The course will be approximately half lecture and half seminar. Students will be
expected to read, discuss and present research papers and technical articles, and to develop proof-of-concept web applications. There will be several short homework assignments as well as a substantial project. Topics will be covered in this course includes, but not limited to, folksonomy, tagging, social networks, blogs, wikis, geospatial web, Semantic Web, Ajax, REST web services, RSS syndication and mashups.

Prerequisites: There are no formal prerequisites, but well prepared students will be familiar with Web programming and will have taken software engineering (e.g., CMSC 345/445) and a database class (e.g., CMSC 461/661).

CMSC 491/691C 

Introduction to Cell Processors and Applications (3 Credits)

W 7:10-8:25 p.m.

Yelena Yesha and John Dorband

Introduction to Cell Processors and Applications is a seminar course.  In each class, two students
(or pre-arranged groups of students) will present published research papers and/or their own work in the area.  Students must also submit a paper which shows original work and demonstrates in-depth understanding of some advanced research area. The scope of this course includes, but is not limited to, understanding the cell architecture, understanding how to map a parallel algorithm to the
cell processor. We'll also cover a number of case studies and discuss various applications that are currently running on the cell architecture.