CSE 240A:
Graduate Computer Architecture

Last updated: Sunday, 07-Dec-2014 18:30:20 PST

Instructor

Michael B. Taylor
	email
EBU 3B 3202	office

Teaching Assistants


	email Shelby
	email Moein
	office

Class Meetings

	Date	Time	Location
Lecture	TuTh	2p-3:20p	Center 216

Join and monitor this google group immediately:
cse-240a-fa14

Office Hours

Prof	Michael Taylor
where	CSE Building, RM 3202
when	Tuesdays, walk down with me immediately after class, 3:30-4:30

TA

Course Description

The course examines modern processor design, including technology, power, out-of-order superscalars, advanced branch prediction, advanced memory system, and selected topics on multicore and recent emerging research.

Required Textbook

Hennessy & Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 5th Edition.

You MUST have in your possession a copy of the book for the duration of the class, and this edition of the book. You may be able to find a electronic copy of the book off of the UCSD library site, but we do not officially support any issues that may arise from the use of this resource.

Grading

Exams and Project	83%	Split TBD. Project will be SUBSTANTIAL.
Refresher Takehome	10%	Last year's 141 final.
Homework	7%	Homeworks assigned through the course. They aren't worth much, but if you don't do them, you will probably bomb the exams. Check-/Check+/Check Due in TA's mailbox 5 minutes before class.
Class Participation	6% or more	In class, or in the google group

Grading Appeal Process If you feel there has been an error in how a test was graded, you have one week from when the assignment is return to bring it to our attention. There is no regrading of HW because of the small weight. You must submit to the appropriate TA a written description of the problem issue, what you feel the fair resolution is, and your unmodified coursework. We photocopy a random sampling of student exams to detect inappropriate modifications. Note that we regrade the entire exam; so your grade may either rise or fall after resubmission. Should, after you appeal, you be unsatisfied with the TA's treatment of the issue, you may resubmit the appeal to the professor.

Schedule

NOTE: Subject to skew and jitter. We reserve the right to change this. I will post the slides for most lectures. Typically I am modifying the slides right up to lecture, and sometimes after lecture (for instance if I decide to flush out some details or clarify a slide), so I will typically wait to post them after the lecture occurs. Since the slides contain material I am not allowed to distribute publicly, they may only available from on campus or via the campus proxy. Instructions for setting up the proxy can be found here. Using the proxy is useful in general, since it gives you full access to the libraries and other resources from off campus.

Note: The format below is: < date, lecture topic for that date, reading assigned that date. >
Holiday:20141127
Holiday:20141111

Thu, October 02	Overview, Administrivia, Tech Trends	Read Appendix C (if your arch is rusty), 1.1-1.12	slides
Tue, October 07	Technology	Read Appendix A (if your arch is rusty); Read this paper.	slides
Thu, October 09	Technology Scaling, Performance		slides
Tue, October 14	Performance	Read Ultrasparc I and III papers.	slides
Thu, October 16	Single Issue, Exceptions, Pipeline Evolution	Read 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.9:"Increasing Fetch Bandwidth"
Tue, October 21	UltraSparc, continued; Front Ends. Takehome due 1 hr before class.	Read 3.4-3.8,3.12-3.13: Out-of-order Superscalars	slides
Thu, October 23	Front Ends	Read MIPS R10K and 21264 papers.
Tue, October 28	In-order Superscalar		slides
Thu, October 30	NO CLASS	Review B.1-B.3; Read 2.1-2.3;	slides
Tue, November 04	Out-of-order	Review B.4-B.5; Read 2.4-2.9;	slides
Thu, November 06	ROB
Thu, November 13	MC
Tue, November 18	MIPS/21264
Thu, November 20	Project Out	Read Exploiting choice: instruction fetch and issue on an implementable simultaneous multithreading processor, Dean M. Tullsen, Susan J. Eggers, Joel S. Emer, Henry M. Levy, Jack L. Lo, and Rebecca L. Stamm, ISCA '96: Proceedings of the 23rd annual international symposium on Computer architecture, New York, NY, USA, 1996, pages 191-202. Read The Raw Microprocessor: A Computational Fabric for Software Circuits and General Purpose Programs,IEEE Micro, March/April 2002. (pdf)
Tue, November 25	MIDTERM EXAM
Tue, December 02	Caches		slides
Thu, December 04	Caches; Virtual Memory	Read Single-ISA Heterogeneous Multi-Core Architectures: The Potential for Processor Power Reduction and Read Conservation Cores: Reducing the Energy of Mature Computations
Tue, December 09	NC
Thu, December 11	Arch Research @ UCSD

Academic Integrity

Cheating is unacceptable. Our policy in this class is to aggressively pursue cheaters, and to ensure that they receive the maximum penalty allowable under the University of California academic system. If you are choosing between not turning in an assignment, or using somebody's else work, do yourself a favor and just don't turn it in. You are facing a permanent mark on your academic record and a certainty of having to explain it to any future employer or school that you apply to.

Exams You must work independently on exams. You may be held responsible if you allow others to copy your work.

Project For the project, if students are allowed to work in groups, you may obviously work with your group members. With non-group members, you may brainstorm about ideas, but you must write your own code. We will use automatic software for finding inappropriate similarities between student code, and substantial similarities in student work (including to previous teachings of the class) could result in referring the student to UCSD for cheating.

HW For group homeworks, you may not look at another group's homeworks; if it is an individual homework, you may not look at anybody else's writeup. A solutions manual, meant only for instructors, exists for this text. Obtaining or using this or other materials (such as other faculty's posted solutions to book problems) is cheating. Obtaining answers from previous years is also cheating.

Announcements

11/25/2014 - Homework 4 has been posted on the google group. It is due Thursday, December 4 at 1pm. Please leave the HW copies in TA's mailbox (room 2237 of the CSE building). Make sure you read the homework policies.

11/20/2014 - Project has been posted on google groups. It is due December 9 at 1 pm for the first phase, designing tests, and December 18 at 6 pm for the final version.

11/8/2014 - Solutions for HW1 and HW2 have been posted. You can collect your HW1 and also CSE141 final exam in the office hours.

11/8/2014 - Homework 3 has been posted on the google group. It is due Tuesday, November 18 at 1pm. Please leave the HW copies in TA's mailbox (room 2237 of the CSE building). Make sure you read the homework policies.

10/29/2014 - Homework 2 has been posted on the google group. It is due Thursday, November 6 at 1pm. Please leave the HW copies in TA's mailbox (room 2237 of the CSE building). Make sure you read the homework policies.

10/21/2014 - Homework 1 has been posted on the google group. It is due Tuesday, October 28 at 1pm. Please leave the HW copies in TA's mailbox (room 2237 of the CSE building). Make sure you read the homework policies.

10/14/2014 - Refresher Takehome (Last year's 141 final) has been posted on the google group. It is due next Tuesday, October 21 at 1pm (1 hour before class). Please leave the HW copies in TA's mailbox (room 2237 of the CSE building). Make sure you read the Refresher Takehome policies.

Assignments

Note: If not otherwise specified, the readings are assigned on the day that they are listed and due at the next class.

Refresher Takehome Policies:

1. You must work on this alone.
2. There is no time limit (despite what is written on the cover).
3. It is open book.

Homework Policies:

* For all homeworks, please create a cover page. The cover page should contain the following info: course (CSE240A), term (Winter 2013), homework number (e.g. HW #1), name(s), and date. To aid in fair grading, please do not put your name(s) on any page other than the cover page.
* You are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to work in groups of 2-3. If working with a group, you only need to submit one writeup. All members will receive the same grade. Typed solutions will make the TA smile but are not strictly required.
* All homeworks should be submitted to the TA in their mailbox (room 2237 in the CSE building) on or before the deadline. No late assignments will be accepted! DO NOT submit your homework via e-mail.

CSE 240A: Graduate Computer Architecture