CS3853, Computer Architecture, Spring 2021
Course Objectives and Schedule

Course Objectives

Understand the design of instruction sets and the impact of this design.
Understand the basic design of functional units to support instruction sets.
Understand the design of a pipelined CPU and memory hierarchy.
Understand of trade-offs in modern CPU design including issues affecting superscalar and speculative executions.
Understand the basic designs of parallel processors.
Experience with processor simulation to study microarchitecture features.

Syllabus

The following syllabus gives you a rough idea of the time spent on each topic. The syllabus may change depending on how quickly or slowly we move. Regardless, the tests and exams will be on the dates shown. Make any travel plans accordingly.

Week	Topics	Assignments & Exams	Supplement Materials
Week 1: 01/18	Course introduction;		Video 1: Intro: What is Comp Arch? Video 2: Intro: Why learn Comp Arch? And Architecture Types by Application Video 3: Intro: Moore's Law and Dennard Scaling Video 4: Intro: Design Metrics Video 5: Intro: Theoretical Architectures
Week 2: 01/25	Instruction Set Architecture (part 1);		Video 6: ISA: Intro Video 7: ISA: Operands Video 8: ISA: Addressing Modes Video 9: ISA: Instruction Length and Operand Count
Week 3: 02/01	Instruction Set Architecture (part 2);	Assignment 1: Instruction Set due.	Video 10: ISA: Good/bad ISAs Video 11: ISA: CISC vs RISC (part 1) Video 12: ISA: CISC vs RISC (part 2) Video 13: ISA: SIMD Video 14: ISA: VLIW Video 15: ISA: Compiler Interaction
Week 4: 02/08	Computer Arithmetic;		Video 16: Comp Arithmetic: Binary/Hex Numbers Video 17: Comp Arrithmetic: Two's Complement Encoding Video 18: Comp Arrithmetic: Floating-point number Encoding Video 19: Comp Arrithmetic: Basic ALU Design
Week 5: 02/15	Winter Storm, no class
Week 6: 02/22	Performance Models and Metrics	Assignment 2: ISA, Computer Arithmetic and Performance Metrics Due;	Video 20: Perf. Measurement: Perf. Metrics (part 1) Video 21: Perf. Measurement: Perf. Metrics (part 2) Video 22: Perf. Measurement: CPU Perf. Equation Video 23: Perf. Measurement: Amdahl's Law Video 24: Perf. Measurement: Benchmarks Video 25: Perf. Measurement: Simulators
Week 7: 03/01	CPU Data Path	Midterm Exam 1 on 03/04th, in class.	Midterm 1 Preparation Midterm1 Preparation Video Video 26: Basic CPU: Five Exec Stages Video 27: Basic CPU: Cycles and Control Signals Video 28: Basic CPU: ALU Data Path (part 1) Video 29: Basic CPU: ALU Data Path (part 2) Video 30: Basic CPU: Memory data Path Video 31: Basic CPU: Branch Data Path Video 32: Basic CPU: All in One Picture Video 33: Basic CPU: Control Signals and Multi-Cycle Impl. Video 34: Basic CPU: Execptions and Micro-programming
Week 8: 03/08	Spring Break
Week 9: 03/15	Instruction Level Parallelism: Pipelining;		Video 35: Intro to Pipelining Video 36: Structural Hazards Video 37: Data Hazards (part 1) Video 38: Data Hazards (part 2) Video 39: Control Hazards Video 40: Hazards Summary and Superscalar
Week 10: 03/22	Branch Prediction;		Video 41: Speculative Execution: Introduction Video 42: Speculative Execution: 2-Bit Counter Video 43: Speculative Execution: Adv Branch Prediction
Week 11: 03/29	Branch Prediction;	Assignment 3: Pipelines and Branch Prediction due	Video 44: Speculative Execution: Memory Disambiguation Video 45: Speculative Execution: Security Implications Assignment 3 Review
Week 12: 04/05	Introduction to Cache	Midterm Exam 2 on 04/08th, in class	Midterm 2 Preparation Video 46: Overview of Cache (part 1) Video 47: Overview of Cache (part 1) Video 48: Overview of Cache: Program Locality Video 49: Overview of Cache: Terminologies Video 50: Basic Cache Questions Video 51: A Simple Cache Example Video 52: Cache Perf. Equations
Week 13: 04/12	Cache Designs		Video 53: Introduction and Cacheline Addresses Video 54: Direct Mapped Cache Video 55: Direct Mapped Cache Example Video 56: Direct Mapped Cache Pros/Cons Video 57: Fully Associative Cache Introduction Video 58: Fully Associative Cache Example and Pros/Cons
Week 14: 04/19	Cache Designs		Video 59: Set-Associative Cache Introuction Video 60: Set-Associative Cache Example and Pros/Cons Video 61: Set-Associative Cache Number of Ways Determination Video 62: Compulsory, Capacity and Conflict Cache Misses Video 63: Cache Replacement Policy - LRU Video 64: Cache Replacement Policy - CAR Video 65: Write-back Policy Video 66: Write-through Policy Video 67: Write miss Policies and Real Cache Examples
Week 15: 04/26	Parallel Processors: GPU and SIMD Bing and FPGA;slides TPU;slides		Video 68: GPU (pt 1) Video 69: GPU (pt 2)
Week 16: 05/03	Parallel Processors: System-on-Chip A12X Bionic, M1, NVidia Xavier Resource Disaggregation: Berkley Firebox; MS RSC; Microservices; HP: The Machine; Intel RSC; LegoOS Wrap-up	Project Due.
Final Exam	Thu, May 13th 2021, 01:00 pm - 02:50 pm		Final Preparation Final Review Video