Assignments:

• All assignments/critiques/reports due at the beginning of class
• Paper critiques/questions:
  
• Read paper and write critique/answer questions due day paper is discussed in class
  
• Critique template posted on course website (TBD).
  

Class Participation:

• Come prepared to class
• Your class participation grade will be based upon your ability to keep up with and add to the discussion during class.
• Some readings will be due before each class, we discuss these readings during class.
• Be on-time
• Participate in discussions
• No Disruptive behavior

Literature Survey (20%):

• Form groups of 1-2 students
  
• Let me know if you have difficulty finding partners
  
• A 1-2 paragraph literature survey topic proposal
  
• 2% of course grade
• Literature survey should be 4-8 pages including references
• At least 5 non-webpage/wikipedia references
• IEEE or ACM conference paper format
• I will provide latex and MSword template
• Example Topics: 
• A detailed comparison of 2 modern superscalar microprocessors – Form a group – each person studies a processor. Then, jointly write a report comparing and contrasting the 2 processors. The features you study must include issue width, out of ordering, branch prediction, caches, prefetching, etc. Create a table summarizing your findings.
• Caches on Modern Microprocessors – Survey at least 6 different processors and write a report comparing and contrasting caches on different processors. Size, associativity, number of levels, architecture of the cache, cache assists, prefetching, cache coherency, etc. The report should include a table that you create summarizing the findings.
• Branch Predictors in Modern Microprocessors – Survey at least 6 different processors and write a report comparing and contrasting the branch predictors in those processors. The report should include a table that you create summarizing the findings.
  
• Cache Consistency Models in Modern Microprocessors – Survey at least 4 different processors and write a report comparing and contrasting the memory consistency models in those processors. The report should include a table that you create summarizing the findings.  Be sure to discuss the implications for out-of-order execution within a processor and across processors in a shared memory system.
  
• Cache Coherency in Modern Multiprocessors – Survey at least 4 different multi-processor systems and write a report comparing and contrasting the methods for maintaining. The report should include a table that you create summarizing the findings.
• Interconnect in multiprocessors
• Power management strategies
• Benchmark workloads for uni-processors and multiprocessors
• Transactional memories
• GP-GPU (General purpose computing using graphics processors)
• SMT approaches, performance
  
• Prefetching mechanisms
• Specialized/novel microarchitectures (Anton, GPUs, physics accelerators etc)
• Hardware support for debugging parallel programs
• Reliability - microarchitectural approaches to address the challenge of reliability in future process tech.
• Microarchitectural support for virtual machines
• Survey available architecture simulators, contrast detail, features and speed of simulation
  
• Start reading now
  
• Pick a topic, find a partner, put together an outline and references identified (see calendar for due dates)
• Good Sources for reading:
  
• Microprocessor Report
  
• Paper copy available in library
• ACM and IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA)
• Available electronically via IEEE Xplore and the ACM Portal
  
• ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS)
• Available electronically via the ACM Portal
• IEEE International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO)
• Available electronically via IEEE Xplore and the ACM Portal
• IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)
• Available electronically via IEEE Xplore
• The Worldwide Computer Architecture Home Page at Wisc. is a very good source of information

Course Project (40%):

• Form groups of 1-2 students
• May be same group as literature survey
• Example projects:
• Simulate a chip-multiprocessor (CMP) and analyze the impact of different cache coherency schemes on multi-threaded benchmark (PARSEC, Splash-2, etc) performance
  
• Simulation of a superscalar processor and analyzing impact of design tradeoffs
• Make an enhancement to a superscalar processor and analyze its performance impact.
• Performance measurements of a modern processor on an actual machine using some state of the art benchmark or application and analyze bottlenecks in that processor.
• Comparison of simulated versus real processor performance for a current modern processor, identifying where simulation is lacking.
  
• Comparison of different modern processors using performance counter measurements
• VHDL/Verilog Simulation of a simple superscalar processor (extend ECEN651 MIPS processor to  be superscalar)
  
• Implementation of a simple superscalar processor in an FPGA
• Reproducing results from a published paper from ISCA, ASPLOS, HPCA, or MICRO will be acceptable as a project.
  
• If you make an extension to what has been published, that will be excellent.
  
• Project proposal:
• Approx 1-2 pages
• ACM/IEEE conference paper format
• Will provide latex templates (you are on your own if you use MS Word)
  
• Should include:
• Objectives - What are you trying to find out? What’s the problem you are trying to solve?
• Background and Motivation - What have others done in this area?
• Relevance - Why do you think this project is important? What is the significance of this work?
  
• Relate what you are doing to what others have done before.
• Methodology - How will you accomplish your goals?  Which group members will do what tasks?
• Expected Outcome - What do you expect would be the outcome of the project once it is completed.
• Project status report:
• 1-2 paragraphs detailing the work completed and the work left to do
• Project report extending literature survey and project proposal:
• Experimental results
• Place results into greater context
• Was this the expected outcome?  If not why?
• What conclusions did you reach?
• Expect 6-10 pages
• ACM/IEEE conference paper format
• Project presentation
• 15% of course grade
  
• 15 minute presentation in class
  
• Presentations that run over 20 minutes will be penalised
  
• Practice to make sure you don't run over!
  
• 5 minutes for Q&A
• 2.5 Weeks of class presentations (4/15/10 - 4/29/10)
  
• Sign-up website: TBD
  
• Groups that signup for the first two days of presentations (4/15/10 or 4/20/10) gain 8% extra credit on project grade (3.2% course grade)
  
• Each member should participate in the presentation
• Sample generic presentation outline (expect ~8-13 slides total for a 15 minute presentation, spend 1-2 minutes per slide):
• Title (1 slide) - Name of project, list of all participants.
  
• Introduction (1-3 slides) - Introduce the overall topic.  Answers the question "Why should the audience care about your project?"   
• Background and Prior Work (1-2 slides) - Summarize relevant parts of Lit Survey. What is the current state of research on this area?
• Project Description (2-5 slides) - Discuss what you did and why.
• Project Evaluation (2-5 slides) - Discuss the project evaluation results.  Start with at least one slide of methodolgy (how your project is evaluated).  Comment upon the results, what do they mean, what is important, was anything unexpected.
  
• Conclusions (1-2 slides) - Summarize the project and highlight the important results.
• You have the option of either emailing me (pgratz@gratz1.com) a copy of your presentation ( in .pdf (preferred), .ppt or .odp formats) 30 minutes before class or bringing a laptop to class and driving it from there.  Either way, presenters should arrive 15 minutes early to class and make sure the presentation works properly in the classroom.