CS7290 Advanced Microarchitecture

Fall 2014



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Course Description
In this course, we will extend our knowledge about computer architecture. This course will cover latest computer architecture papers and advanced topcis in computer architectures. This course is a project-based course in which you will learn advanced micro-architectures by actually implementing a simple many-core architecture using a FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) board and also improving architectures with a cycle-level simulator. This course requires significant amount of your time to complete projects. In the class, the students will also present papers.

Topics:
- Circuit-level micro-architecture
- Memory systems
- Performance, power modeling
- Reliability and Resilience
- GPU architectures
- Cycle-level architecture simulator and simulations
- FPGA programming, hardware description language

Pre-requisite:
CS6290/CS4290/ECE6100/ECE4100 or an equivalent course A
Very good knowledge of C/C++ programming

Textbooks: There is no required textbook for the course.

Course Home Pages: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~hyesoon/fall14/cs7290/index.html

Grading Scheme
Assignments (50%)
Exam-I (15%)
Exam-II or Project (15%)
Paper presentations (10%)
Class discussion (10%)


Final grade algorithm:
90 ~ 100 (out of 100) & Successful assignments: A
80 ~ 90 : B
70 ~ 80 : C
Otherwise F


  • Assignments A group of two students will do assignments togehter. There will be 5 assignments (2 are using MacSim, a cycle-level simulator, and 3 are FPGA programming.).

  • Class Presentation A group of two students will present one or two papers in the class. You might choose papers that are published within 3 years in MICRO/ISCA/HPCA/ASPLOS conferences. You should create your own slides.

  • Class participation Class discussion is one of the important part of the class. Some discussions will be lead by students.

  • Regrades: Any regrade requests should be submitted to an instructor within a week of when the work was returned in class/T-square.

  • Assignment late policy: All programming assignments are due on the day specified by the assignment description and posted online. To account for short-term unexpected events like computer crashes, submission problems, and clock skew, we will allow 5:55 hours of slack and accept projects until exactly (due time + 5 hr 55 m). Projects received after the due date will lose 10% of the grade on the first late day, 20% on the second, and 40% on the third. Weekend days are counted in exactly the same way as weekdays (e.g., if the project deadline is Friday and you turn it in Sunday, that's two days late). Programming assignment extension: You can request an extension for programming assignments for up to 5 days without any penalty only once during the semester for special situations such as conference paper deadlines, interviews etc. You must request the extension 2 days before by e-mail. No late policy will be applied together if you request an extension.

  • Student Honor Code: Zero tolerance toward a violation of the student honor code. Any misbehavior will be reported to Dean of Students directly.

  • Office Hours: Please respect the office hours of the instructor by planning ahead. Other times are possible by appointments.