MIME-Version: 1.0 Server: CERN/3.0 Date: Monday, 06-Jan-97 20:28:56 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 5166 Last-Modified: Monday, 06-Jan-97 03:53:34 GMT CS382M: Advanced Computer Architecture

CS382M: Advanced Computer Architecture

This course focuses on the techniques of quantitative analysis and evaluation of modern computing systems, such as the selection of appropriate benchmarks to reveal and compare the performance of alternative design choices in system design. The emphasis is on the major component subsystems of high performance computers: pipelining, instruction level parallelism, memory hierarchies, input/output, and network-oriented interconnections. Students will undertake a major computing system analysis and design project of their own choosing.


Administrative Information


Readings

Textbook: Hennessy and Patteson Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Second Edition

In addition, we will read current papers on various aspects of current computer architecture research. Watch this space for a pointer to the reading list.


Grading


Course Schedule

Week Date Topic Reading Due
1 Jan 13 Intro, Admin, Review: Perf/Cost, Amdahl's Law, Tech Trends Ch 1
2 Jan 20 Caching and Memory, ISAs, Pipelining, Hazards and Branch Prediction Ch 2 M: MLK Holiday

F: HW 1

3 Jan 27 Pipelining, Hazards, and Static Branch Prediction Ch 3 F: Project Proposal
4 Feb 3 ILP: Scoreboarding, Tomasulu, Speculation Ch 4 F: HW 2
5 Feb 10 ILP: Dynamic Prediction, Limits of ILP, Vector Processors Ch D
6 Feb 17 Memory Hierarchy Ch 5 F: Project Survey
7 Feb 24 Memory DRAM, VM, and Banks F: HW 3
8 Mar 3 Memory and Review W: Midterm 1
9 Mar 10 Spring Break M-F: Spring Break
10 Mar 17 I/O: Metrics, Queuing, Busses, Disks, RAID Ch 6
11 Mar 24 I/O: Tertiary, Networks F: HW 4
12 Mar 31 Networks Ch 7 F: Project Checkpoint
13 Apr 7 Networks, Parallel Architectures F: HW 5
14 Apr 14 MPPs Ch 8
15 Apr 21 MPPs, Review W: Midterm 2
16 Apr 28 Project Preseantations M/W/F: Project Presentations

Fri: Last Day of Classes

M: Project Written Report


Additional Resources