360N: Computer Architecture

Fall 2006

University of Texas at Austin

Instructor:  Prof. Derek Chiou

Topics to be covered:

• What is Architecture, Tradeoffs
• Instruction Set Architecture, LC-3b ISA
• Assemblers: Translating Assembly Language to ISA
• Microarchitecture: Detailed LC-3b implementation
• Physical memory, unaligned access, interleaving, SRAM, DRAM
• Virtual memory, page tables, TLB, VAX model, PowerPC model, contrast with segmentation
• Cache memory
• Interrupts/Exceptions
• I/O
• Performance Improvement. Metrics, Pipelining.
• Branch prediction
• Out-of-order execution
• Vector processing
• Integer arithmetic, Floating point, IEEE Standard
• Measurement Methodology
• Intro to Multiprocessing, Interconnection networks, Amdahl's Law, Consistency models
• Cache coherency
• Alternative Models of Concurrency: SIMD, MIMD, VLIW, dataflow, etc.
• State-of-the-art Microprocessor

Important dates:

Date	Work Issued/Due
Aug 30	Lab 1 Issued (write LC-3b assembler, write an assembler, assemble your program)
Sep 6
Sep 11	Lab 2 Issued (Write a program in C that simulates at the instruction cycle level the baseline LC-3b ISA. Test your simulator with the output of the assembler for the application program written in Programming Lab 1.)
Sep 13
Sep 18	Lab 1 Due (Sep 17 11:59PM)
Sep 20
Sep 25	Lab 2 Due (Sep 24^th, 11:59PM) Lab 3 Issued (Finish the LC-3b)
Sep 27
Oct 2
Oct 4
Oct 9	Lab 3 Due (Oct 8^th, 11:59PM) Lab 4 Issued (Interrupts/Exceptions)
Oct 11
Oct 16
Oct 18	EXAM 1
Oct 23
Oct 25
Oct 30
Nov 1	Lab 4 Due (Oct 31, 11:59pm) Lab 5 Issued (Virtual memory)
Nov 6
Nov 8
Nov 13
Nov 15	Possible guest lecture
Nov 20	EXAM 2
Nov 22	Lab 5 Due (Nov 21, 11:59PM) Lab 6 Issued (Pipelining)
Nov 27
Nov 29
Dec 4
Dec 6
Dec 8	Lab 6 Due (Dec 8 11:59PM)
Dec 15	TENATIVE (Registrar has power to change) FINAL EXAM TIME