The textbook for this class is Computer Organization and Design, the Hardware/Software Interface, 5th edition, by David Patterson and John Hennessy. Patterson (past president of the Association for Computing Machinery) and Hennessy (president of Stanford University) are very big names in computer architecture, and they are excellent writers to boot. Read the book. It's worth your time.
Your grade in the course will be determined by your performance on three takehome exams and homework. Each of these four pieces will count for 25% of your grade.
Each homework assignment will be given a due date and time. Work handed in after the due time but within 24 hours will be docked 25%. Between 24 and 48 hours late will be docked 50%. After that, no credit.
The goals of this policy are: (1) to give you a push to do the work in a timely way to support your learning; (2) to provide a framework of fairness; and (3) to enable the graders to do their work reasonably efficiently by not forcing them to go back and treat lots of students as special cases.
With those goals in mind, I am willing to be flexible. If you have a special circumstance and check with me ahead of time, I may be willing to extend the due date for you. (Note that "I'm going to a funeral or the national championship for X" is a special circumstance, but "I have a paper due in another class" is not.) Of course, emergencies of various sorts can also result in extensions--just talk to me about it. If you really struggle with an assignment and want to figure it out even after the deadline, feel free to talk to me and maybe we can work something out. The big goal here is your learning, so let's talk about ways to make that happen. Finally, in practice the graders and I will generally ignore an hour or two of lateness, as long as it doesn't get to be a habit for you.
One last note: takehome exams are due by the due time, and will receive no credit otherwise except in very unusual circumstances.
Working with your classmates is generally a good thing. Sharing insights can be fun, and can enhance everybody's learning. The main danger of collaborating on course work is in allowing your collaborator to do all the work, and thus all the learning. If you want to work together on homework for this class, that's fine with me, but take care not to fall into collaboration's traps.
For homework assignments, you may work alone or with one other person. If you work with a partner, you may submit one copy of your work with both names on the paper or in the comments.
For takehome exams, you must work alone, using only the resources I explicitly allow.
If you have any doubts about what constitutes acceptable collaboration, let me know.