360N: Computer Architecture

Fall 2007

University of Texas at Austin

Instructor:  Prof. Derek Chiou
TAs: Nikhil Patil and Ikhwan Lee

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 29	Lab 1 Issued (write LC-3b assembler, write an assembler, assemble your program)
Sep 5
Sep 10	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 12
Sep 17	Lab 1 Due (Sep 16 11:59PM)
Sep 19
Sep 24	Lab 2 Due (Sep 23^th, 11:59PM) Lab 3 Issued (Finish the LC-3b)
Sep 26
Oct 1
Oct 3
Oct 8	Lab 3 Due (Oct 7^th, 11:59PM) Lab 4 Issued (Interrupts/Exceptions)
Oct 10
Oct 15
Oct 17	EXAM 1
Oct 22
Oct 24
Oct 29
Oct 31	Lab 4 Due (Oct 30, 11:59pm) Lab 5 Issued (Virtual memory)
Nov 5
Nov 7	Guest lecture (ICCAD conference)
Nov 12
Nov 14
Nov 19	EXAM 2
Nov 21	Lab 5 Due (Nov 20, 11:59PM) Lab 6 Issued (Pipelining)
Nov 26
Nov 28
Dec 5
Dec 7	Lab 6 Due (Dec 7th 11:59PM)
Dec 14	TENTATIVE (Registrar has power to change) FINAL EXAM