CS4290/CS6290HPCA High-Performance Computer Architecture

Fall 2011



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Course Description
This is a graduate-level course on how the computer works. In this course, we will review fundamental structures in modern microprocessor and computer system architecture design. We will cover computer organization, instruction set design, memory system design, pipelining, cache coherence protocols, memory schedulers, power/energy, prefetching and other techniques to explore instruction level parallelism and thread level parallelism. We will also cover system level topics such as storage subsystems. We will also have case studies as to how modern microprocessors are designed.

Text book:
No required text book.
Recommended books
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th Edition by John Hennessy and David Patterson.
Microprocessor architecture, Jean-Loup Baer, Cambridge.
Papers (see Reading )

Course Policies
Office Hours: Please respect the office hours of the instructor and TA by planning ahead. Other times are possible by appointments.
Student honor code: Zero tolerance toward a violation of the student honor code. Any misbehavior will be reported to Dean of Students directly.