ELEC 5200-001/6200-001 Computer Architecture and Design
Spring 2012, MWF 11AM, Broun 306
Course Syllabus, Grade Sheet, Statistics

Instructor: Vishwani D. Agrawal, James J. Danaher Professor of ECE

Teaching Assistant: Jia Yao, 334-844-1864, B309, consulting hours: WF 9:00-11:00AM.

Textbook: Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Revised 4th Edition, D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (Elsevier), 2012, ISBN 978-0-12-374750-1.

EXAM SCHEDULE:
Test 1 (rescheduled), Friday, 2/10/12, 11:00-11:50AM, Broun 306, use of books, notes, etc., permitted, problems, solution, statistics.
Test 2, Wednesday, 4/11/12, 11:00-11:50AM, Broun 306, use of books, notes, etc., permitted, problems, solution, statistics.
Final Exam, Friday, May 4, 2012, 12:00-2:30PM, Broun 306, use of books, notes, etc., permitted, problems, solution, statistics.

PROJECT, Assigned 1/13/12:
Assignment and Deadlines: Part 1, 2/20/12; Part 2, 3/5/12; Part 3, 3/23/12; Part 4, 4/6/12; Part 5, 4/20/12
Presentation: Processor Design and Implementation
Read the following feedback from previous students:
Project feedback from Spring 2012 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Project feedback from Fall 2011 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Project feedback from Spring 2011 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Project feedback from Fall 2010 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Project feedback from Spring 2010 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Project feedback from Fall 2009 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Project feedback from Spring 2009 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Project feedback from Fall 2008 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Project feedback from Spring 2008 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Project feedback from Fall 2007 class: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

HOMEWORK:
Homework 1, assigned 1/9/12, due 1/20/12
Homework 2, assigned 1/27/12, due 2/3/12, solution
Homework 3, assigned 2/1/12, due 2/8/12, solution
Homework 4, assigned 2/17/12, due 2/24/12, solution
Homework 5, assigned 2/24/12, due 3/2/12, solution
Homework 6, assigned 3/5/12, due 3/19/12, solution
Homework 7, assigned 3/26/12, due 4/2/12, solution
Homework 8, assigned 4/2/12, due 4/9/12, solution
Homework 9, assigned 4/9/12, due 4/18/12, solution
Homework 10, assigned 4/18/12, due 4/25/12, solution

LECTURES AND READING ASSIGNMENTS:
Guest Lecture: Modeling and Simulating ASIC Designs with VHDL, by Vic Nelson, 1/9/12
Guest Lecture: VHDL Simulation, Testbench Design, by Vic Nelson, 1/11/12
. . . For more details of VHDL, see Prof. Nelson's Course Website
Class Project: Processor Design and Implementation, by Jia Yao, 1/13/12
Lecture 1: Introduction, 1/18/12
. . . Read: S. Borkar and A. A. Chen, "The Future of Microprocessors," Comm. ACM, vol. 54, no. 5, pp. 67-77, May 2011.
. . . Read: J. Fitzpatrick, "An Interview with Steve Furber (ARM Designer)," Comm. ACM, vol. 54, no. 5, pp. 34-39, May 2011.
. . . Read: D. A. Patterson, "The Trouble with Multi-Cores," IEEE Spectrum, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 28-32 and 52-53, July 2010.
Lecture 2: History of Computers (Chapter 1), 1/20/12 . . .
. . . See: Babbage's Difference Engine in action.
. . . Suggested Reading: J. von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958 (or later editions).
. . . Suggested Reading: Book, The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer, by Jane Smiley, 256 pages, Doubleday.
. . . Interesting Reading: Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, Penguin, 2008.
. . . See: A computer challenges its creator.
. . . Read: Unix Turns Forty, IEEE Spectrum, vol. 48, no. 12, pp. 34-37 and 52-55, December 2011.
. . . Read: "An Interview with Maurice Wilkes," Comm. ACM, vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 39-42, Sep 2009.
. . . An Obituary: Sir Maurice Wilkes (June 26, 1913 - November 29, 2010)
. . . Read: "An Interview with Edsger W. Dijkstra," Comm. ACM, vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 41-47, Aug 2010.
. . . See: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologizes to Alan Turing
Lecture 3: Instruction Set Architecture (Chapter 2), 1/27/12 . . .
. . . Read: J. Mashey, "The Long Road to 64 Bits," Comm. ACM, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 45-53, Jan 2009.
. . . Read: B. Smith, "ARM and Intel Battle over the Mobile Chip's Future," Computer, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 15-18, May 2008.
Lecture 4: Compiling and Executing Programs (Chapter 2), 2/6/12 . . .
. . . Read: M. Hall, D. Padua and K. Pingali, "Compiler Research: The Next 50 Years," Comm. ACM, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 60-67, Feb 2009.
. . . Read: J. Larus and G. Hunt, "The Singularity System," Comm. ACM, vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 72-79, Aug 2010.
. . . Read: S. V. Adve and H.-J. Boehm, "Memory Models: A Case for Retinking Parallel Languages and Hardware," Comm. ACM, vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 90-101, Aug 2010.
. . . Read: G. L. Steele Jr., "An Interview with Frances E. Allen," Comm. ACM, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 39-45, Jan 2011.
Lecture 5: Datapath and Control (Chapter 4), 2/15/12 . . .
. . . Read: About an alternative design style: A. J. Martin, M. Nystrom and C. G. Wong, "Three Generations of Asynchronous Microprocessors."
. . . Read: D. Lindley, "Brains and Bytes," Comm. ACM, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 13-15, Sep 2010.
Lecture 6: Pipelining (Chapter 6), 2/27/12 . . .
. . . See: Charlie Chaplin's Assembly Line in Really Modern Times
. . . Read: M. Versace and B. Chandler, "The Brain of a New Machine," IEEE Spectrum, vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 30-37, Dec 2010.
Lecture 7: Pipeline Control and Performance (Chapter 6), 3/7/12 . . .
. . . Watch: Ceibal - Uruguay's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Program (videos are periodically updated)
. . . See: The PC of 2019
. . . See how by 2040 you will be able to upload your brain...
. . . Read about the nature of computing problems: "P vs. NP," Comm. ACM, vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 78-86, Sep 2009.
Lecture 8: Microprogramming (Appendix D), 3/19/12 . . .
Lecture 9: Memory Organization (Chapter 5), 3/26/12 . . .
. . . Read: P. J. Denning, "The Locality Principle," Comm. ACM, vol. 48, no. 7, pp. 19-24, Jul 2005.
. . . Read: K. Beyls and E. H. D'Hollander, "Refactoring for Data Locality," Computer, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 62-71, Feb 2009.
. . . Read: G. Graffe, "The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later," Comm. ACM, vol. 57, no. 7, pp. 48-59, Jul 2009.
. . . Read: S. M. Bedair, J. M. Zavada and N. El-Masry, "A Spin to Remember," IEEE Spectrum, vol. 47, no. 11, pp. 45-49, Nov 2010.
. . . Read: S. B. Cooper, "Turing's Titanic Machine," Comm. ACM, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 74-83, March 2012.
Lecture 10: Performance of a Computer (Chapter 4), 10/24/11 . . .
. . . Read: M. D. Hill and M. R. Marty, "Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era," Computer, vol. 41, no. 7, pp. 33-38, Jul 2008.
. . . and, D. H. Woo and H.-H. S. Lee, "Extending Amdahl's Law for Energy-Efficient Computing in the Multi-Core Era," Computer, vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 24-31, Dec 2008.
. . . Read more on performance: S. M. Pieper, J. M. Paul and M. J. Schulte, "A New Era of Performance Evaluation," Computer, vol. 40, no. 9, pp. 23-30, Sep 2007.
. . . and, S. Gal-On and M. Levy, "Measuring Multicore Performance," Computer, vol. 41, no. 10, pp. 99-102, Oct 2008
. . . and, S. Williams, A. Waterman and D. Patterson, "Roofline: An Insightful Visual Performance Model for Multicore Architectures," CACM, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 65-76, Apr 2009.
. . . and, N. Shavit, "Data Structures in the Multicore Age," CACM, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 76-84, Mar 2011.
. . . and, use Auburn's Multiprocessor: vSMP HPCC
Lecture 11: Auburn's High Performance Compute Cluster by Jia Yao, 4/13/12
Lecture 12: Instruction-Level Parallelism, 4/18/12 . . .
. . . Read: J. Torrellas, "Architectures for Extreme-Scale Computing," Computer, vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 28-35, Nov 2009.
Following lectures are for self review by students:
Lecture 13 (Lecture 11 from Spring 2010): Computer Arithmetic (Chapter 3)
. . . Also see Chapter 2 in D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming: Seminumerical Algorithms, Volume II, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1981.
Lecture 14 (Lecture 12 from Spring 2010): Symbol Representation and Floating Point Numbers (Chapters 2 and 3)
. . . Read: "IEEE 754: An Interview with William Kahan," Computer, Mar 1998, pp. 114-115.

PREVIOUS OFFERINGS BY PROF. V. AGRAWAL: Fall 2011, Spring 2011, Fall 2010, Spring 2010, Fall 2009, Spring 2009, Fall 2008, Spring 2008, Fall 2007, Spring 2007, Fall 2006, Fall 2005, Fall 2004