Spring
2010
Class Time: T R 2:20-3:35pm Class Room: 105A ZACH
Instructor:
Dr. Paul V. Gratz Office: WERC
333D
Office
Phone: 488-4551
Office Hours:
R 3:35p, F 11:00a
E-mail:
pgratz@gratz1.com Course page: http://www.gratz1.com/pgratz/courses/ecen676-spring10 TA: Tarun Soni
Office Hours: M 11:30a, W 11:30a
Office: WERC 102 Email: tarun1985@neo.tamu.edu
Course Description:
Computer
architects have been striving to improve performance ever since the
first stored program computer was designed half a century ago.
Superscalar execution is a key technique towards this aim and
most modern microprocessors employ superscalar issue and other
instruction-level parallelism techniques to enhance their
performance. Superscalar processors are
processors that can issue more than one instruction per cycle.
This course examines the
tradeoffs and design considerations in the design of
superscalar or instruction level parallel (ILP) microprocessors. The
course will also explore other current architectural approaches to
improve performance.
Course Contents:
A quantitative and qualitative understanding of superscalar, superpipelined, dataflow and VLIW processors;
Available parallelism in programs; Out of order instruction
execution; Reservation stations; Reorder buffers; Exception handling
in out of order processors; Branch prediction techniques; Memory
systems for superscalar processors; Trace caches; Memory
disambiguation and load/store reordering; Performance evaluation of
superscalar processors; Multicore processors; Composable distributed processors.
Course Objectives:
- Teach
you fundamentals of state of the art microprocessors
- Give
you experience in state of the art computer architecture tools
- Give
you some exposure to computer architecture research
- Give
you some experience in technical writing
- Give
you some experience in project presentations
Prerequisites:
- ECEN
651 Microprogrammed
Control of Digital Systems or CPSC 614 Computer Architecture.
- Talk to the professor if you have questions on prerequisite.
- Some
programming skills (C and Unix) and at least one assembly language.
- Interest
in state-of-the-art microprocessors
Materials:
Required:
- Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar
Processors, John P. Shen and Mikko Lipasti, McGraw Hill
Publishers.
- A
Collection of Papers from conferences and journals. Available via TAMU Library website.
References (Not required to buy) :- Superscalar
Microprocessor Design, by Mike Johnson, Prentice Hall Publishers
- Computer
Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, by Hennessy and Patterson,
Morgan Kaufman
- Computer Organization and Design, Fourth Edition, Fourth Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface, by Patterson and Hennessy, Morgan Kaufman
- Parallel Computer Architecture: A Hardware/Software Approach by David Culler, J.P. Singh, and Anoop Gupta, Morgan Kaufman
- Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks by W. J. Dally and B. Towles, Morgan Kaufman
- TAMU Library, Electrical Engineering Subject Guide
Grading Policy:
25% - 2
Exams
40% - Course
Project
35% - Homework
Assignments, Paper Critiques, Class Participation,
Literature Survey
Late Assignments:- You are expected to turn in the HW's within the first five minutes of class on the day the HW is due.
- Any time after the first five minutes of class is considered late.
- Students will have a total of up to 3 "slip days" to use over the course of the semester for turning in late assignments
- A student may use those slip days to turn in one assignment 3 days late, 3 assignments 1 day late or any other combination.
- Weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and official Holidays do not count against slip days.
Logistical Issues:
You are responsible to read
this information and familiarize yourself with the important
logistical information on it.
Disruptive behavior: If a
student's behavior in class is sufficiently disruptive to warrant
immediate action, the instructor is entitled to remove a student on
an interim basis, pending an informal hearing with the Head of the
Department offering the course. This hearing must take place within
three working days of the student's removal. This rule and
supporting information may be found at
http://student-rules.tamu.edu/rule21.htm.
Accommodations for students
with disabilities: It is the responsibility of the student to
provide instructors with documentation showing they have registered
with Disability Services and requested accommodation. Instructors
then have the responsibility to work with Disability Services to
provide reasonable accommodations. If a student who has not
registered with Disability Services requests an accommodation, they
should be referred to Disability Services at
http://disability.tamu.edu .
Email Policy: Please
remember that email will be used as an official means of
communicating class information to you. You should make sure that
the email address on file in Howdy is a
current and functioning address. In case of any changes in your
email address, please let me know ASAP.
- Academic
Honesty: Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will be dealt with
under the Aggie Honor System Office guidelines. Upon discovering a
suspected violation of the Aggie Honor code, I will contact the
Aggie Honor System office http://www.tamu.edu/aggiehonor/.
|