EE382V -- Computer Architecture: User System Interplay

Spring 2007
Course Descriptor and Syllabus

• Convey the importance of the interaction and interfaces between the various components of a computing system, including the user, programmer, programming and software systems, hardware platform, processor and memory, and fabrication technology.
• Lay foundations necessary for conducting research in computer architecture, such as critiquing architectures in the context of system requirements and evaluating novel architectural ideas.

• The students will be able to explain what research in computer architecture is.
• The students will be able to design experiments for analyzing and evaluating an architectural idea.
• The students will be able to critique an architecture and system with respect to user requirements.
• The students will be able to discuss the interactions and interplay of a whole system.
• The students will be able to define system properties based on user requirements.
• The students will be able to analyze user requirements from system properties.
• The students will be able to define system constraints on users.

• Class attendance and participation: Students are required to attend all classes, as well as prepare and actively participate in class discussions. If you know you will not be able to attend a class or missed a class for a good reason please contact the instructors.


• Grading and auditing: This class should be taken for a grade and not the credit/no-credit option. If this is a serious issue for you, please see the professor. Auditing the class is generally fine, as long as you take it seriously and are well prepared for the discussion on those classes you choose to attend. If you are interested in auditing the class instead of registering, please see the professor.


• Individual and group meetings: Each student is expected to meet with the instructors individually during the first 4 weeks of the semester. Additionally, each group collaborating on a project must consult with the instructors at least once every two weeks.


• Collaboration: Group work is strongly encouraged for both class preparation and the final project. While class preparation can be done individually or as a team of up to 3 members (you may, and even should, change teams occasionally), the final project must be collaborative in nature and requires teams of 3 students. Before forming a larger or smaller group for the final project, please contact the instructors for permission. Each group should submit a single writeup. To more fairly evaluate the final project, each student is expected to hand in a sincere evaluation of each team member's contribution. Discussions outside the group are also permitted, however, plagiarism will not be tolerated (see below for academic dishonest policy).


• Class preparation (20% of final grade): Before each class the students will prepare, in writing, points for discussion during class based on the reading material provided (material will be provided the week before the discussion or earlier). The writeups should roughly follow the standard format described in http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~merez/EE382V/prepare.html and be brief and concise as they are indented to stimulate class discussion and participation rather than test knowledge. Each student must submit the writeup before the start of class, either alone or as part of a group submission.


• Discussion leading (required to pass, 10% of final grade): Each student will have a chance to lead one of the class discussions. Leading a discussion requires more careful reading of the assigned material and preparing discussion points that place the reading material in the broader context of the class and address the user, software system, hardware system, and evaluation. Because leading a discussion is more involved than normal class preparation, discussion leading will be done by teams of 2 students (not necessarily members of the same project group).


• Scribing (required to pass, 5% of final grade): Taking notes during class is important, however, when everyone is engrossed in writing, little discussion and conversation can take place. Therefore, in each class, a single student will be a scribe who will take notes for everyone. The formatted scribe notes are due one week after class. After the instructors review the notes, which may be returned to the scribe for revision of content, the notes will be posted to blackboard for the benefit of the entire class. Each student will be a scribe for a single class. Please see http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~merez/EE382V/scribe.html for formatting instructions and more information.


• Quizzes (required to pass, 10% of final grade): The class will tentatively have two quizzes (see dates below).


• Final project (writeup -- 25% of final grade; class presentation -- 10% of final grade): The final project must be a collaboration of 3 students and individual work will not be accepted. Please see above for group guidelines and contact the instructors in case of difficulties in finding partners. The students should form teams and start working on the project by 2/16/2007. Each group will choose one of two project forms. The first form is a detailed review and comparison of existing architectural techniques with analysis of hardware, software, and user tradeoffs (e.g., hardware complexity, die area, power requirements, compilation feasibility, real-time support, security issues, programming effort, data size restrictions, ...). The second form will be an open-ended research project suggesting a new architecture in the context of a specific system scenario (e.g., scientific computing, data retrieval, mobile computing, ...).


• Other (20% of final grade): The instructors will evaluate each student based largely on class participation and individual/group meetings.


• Feedback: Candid and frank (anonymous) feedback and criticism regarding the choice of topics, pace, workload, etc ..., will be greatly appreciated by the instructors and will positively impact the class.


• Final examination: There will not be a final examination in this class.


• Policy summary:

  Component	% of final grade	Required to pass? ('Yes' means that you will fail the class if you don't do it.)
  Attendance and participation	Part of "other" 20%	Yes
  Individual/group meetings	Part of "other" 20%	Yes
  Class preparation (writeups)	20%	Strongly recommended
  Discussion leading	10%	Yes
  Scribing	5%	Yes
  Quizzes	10%	Yes
  Final project	25% (writeup) + 10% (class presentation)	Yes
  Feedback	0%	Appreciated

• Users and Systems
  • Performance, power, usability, programmability, reliability, designability, cost, ...
• General Purpose Processing (Superscalar)
  • backward compatibility, virtualization, performance, power, reliability.
• Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability
  • Servers and mainframes.
• Business aspects of architecture
• Design for manufacturability
• Parallel architectures
• Shared memory systems
  • OpenMP, transactional memory
• Distributed memory systems
  • MPI, hardware support, Google
• Graphics processors
• Stream Processors
• Embedded applications and FPGAs