CIS 501: Fall 2004

CIS 501 (FALL 2004): Introduction To Computer Architecture

Instructor: Amir Roth (amir@cis)
Office hours: 603 Levine, TR 10-11 (or by appointment)

TA: Tingting Sha (shatingt@seas)
Office hours: M 9-10:30 AM, T 4:30-6 PM
TA: Gaurav Shah (gauravsh@seas)
Office hours: W 1:15-2:45 PM, R 4:30-6 PM

Newsgroup: upenn.cis.cis501
Lecture: Hielmeier Hall, TR 12-1:30 (CLASS SCHEDULE)

Course Description

This year's 501 will be a little different than last year's version. This year's course will feature heavier emphasis on power and reliability aspects, as well as multiprocessors and multithreading. We will cover the following topics:

performance, power, reliability and cost
instruction set design
memory systems and I/O
in-order pipelines
instruction scheduling techniques
static methods for instruction-level parallelism (ILP): VLIW, EPIC and IA64
dynamic methods for ILP: out-of-order execution and speculation
vectors/SIMD and multimedia
multithreading and multiprocessors

I will present new-"research"-topics as we go along and as time permits.

Reading Materials and Resources

We will use one textbook:

Hennessy and Patterson, "Computer Architecture: A quantitative Approach" (THIRD edition).

Although the course is introductory in name, it actually assumes that you have a background in basic computer architecture and microprocessor design. Those of you who feel that you are lacking in certain areas may want to acquire a copy of the following book:

Patterson and Hennessy, "Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface"

I will supply you with any additional reading material. Also, class notes will be available on-line. Check the ever-changing CLASS SCHEDULE for notes. Hard copy versions will be available at the beginning of each class, extra copies will be placed in bins outside of Levine 502.

Simulation Tools

For your homeworks and projects, you will be using the SimpleScalar microarchitecture simulator. You can run your simulations on your workstations or "on the grid" using Condor.

Homework

There will be 4 homework assignments, each consisting of problems to be worked out by hand and some short simulation work using SimpleScalar. Homework is due at the beginning of the class period for which it is assigned. As for late homework, you have four "grace" days (not class periods) to use to hand in late homeworks. You don't have to use them at all. You can use one per homework. You can use all four on the first homework. Once you have exceeded these four days, late work will not be accepted unless you make prior arrangement with me. You may ask myself, the TA, or each other for assistance, but please cite your references on the assignment. Check the CLASS SCHEDULE for homeworks.

Course Project

An important part of the course-from both an educational and a grading standpoint-will be a six-week mini research project. You will do the project in groups of 3 or 4. The project deliverables consist of a proposal, and a 4K word conference-format final report. The default project is to explore some small extension to a concept we study in class, to validate the experimental data in some paper, or to evaluate an idea of your own. More details about the project will be available as the semester progresses.

Exams

The mid-term exam will be in class on Nov. 4. The final will be on Dec. 16, 11-1 (this is the assigned Finals week slot), and will be cumulative. The final exam will count as the PhD Architecture WPE I exam.

Grading

Grading breakdown for the course is as follows:

Homework: 20%
Mid-term exam: 25%
Final exam: 35%
Project: 20%

If you want to cheat, go ahead. Getting caught will result in (at best) a non-negotiable grade of zero on the corresponding item, with a commensurate effect on the final grade. For example, if I catch you cheating on the mid-term, you will get no higher than a 75 for the course (last year that was a C).