Your final grade for the course will be based on the following weights:
The project in 18-742 is an open-ended research project, done in groups of three (or two, with permission of the instructor). The project requires a proposal, a project status report, and a final report (both written and presented).
There are no official texts for the course. If you're not familiar
with the background material,
you may wish to look at:
You might take a peek at the following CMU undergrad systems courses for
background
information on computer systems (15-213/18-213),
computer architecture (18-447),
and parallel computer architecture (15-418).
There are also other PhD-level computer architecture courses, such as 18-740 and 15-740.
Also available as an ical file that you can subscribe to.
Note: Class will meet on average two times per week, but we will frontload the lectures at the begining of the semester. This schedule is subject to change, so please hold all three days (Mon, Wed, Fri) open each week.
| Date | Topic | Notes and Further Reading | Required Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part 1: Performance Scalability & Projection | |||
| Mon 01/13 | Introduction [pdf] |
A few classics. Amdahl1967 (Amdahls law), Hill2008 (Amdahls law in multicore era), Hamming1986 (how to be a great researcher) | Moore1965 |
| Wed 01/15 | Dark Silicon and the End of Multicore Scaling [pdf] |
Rogers2009 (CMP scaling), Ferdman2012 (scale-out workloads), Esmaeilzadeh2011-retrospective (2023) | Esmaeilzadeh2011 |
| Part 2: Parallel Architectures & Memory Coherence and Consistency | |||
| Fri 01/17 | The Case for a Single-Chip Multiprocessor [pdf] |
Tullsen1995 (simultaneous multithreading), Chung2010 (single-chip hetero computing) | Olukotun1996 |
| Mon 01/20 | No CMU classes - MLK Jr Day |
||
| Wed 01/22 | Why On-chip Cache Coherence is Here To Stay [pdf] |
Boroumand2019 (CoNDA) | Martin2012 |
| Fri 01/24 | Cohmeleon: Learning-Based Orchestration of Accelerator Coherence in Heterogeneous SoCs [pdf] |
Student presentations. Ferdman2011 (cuckoo directory coherence) [slides] | Zuckerman2021 |
| Part 3: Prefetching | |||
| Mon 01/27 | Bingo Spatial Data Prefetcher [pdf] |
Godala2024 (PDIP instruction prefetcher) | Bakhshalipour2019 |
| Wed 01/29 | Runahead Execution: An Alternative to Very Large Instruction Windows for Out-of-Order Processors [pdf] |
Mutlu2003 | |
| Fri 01/31 | Decoupled Vector Runahead [pdf] |
Student presentations. Hashemi2016 (enhanced memory controller) [slides] | Naithani2023 |
| Part 4: Near-Data Computing | |||
| Mon 02/03 | RowClone: Fast and Energy-Efficient in-DRAM Bulk Data Copy and Initialization [pdf] |
Seshadri2017 (in-DRAM and/or/not) | Seshadri2013 |
| Wed 02/05 | Livia: Data-Centric Computing Throughout the Memory Hierarchy |
Schwedock2024 (Leviathan) | Lockerman2020 |
| Fri 02/07 | DIMM-Link: Enabling Efficient Inter-DIMM Communication for Near-Memory Processing |
Student presentations. Ahn2015 (Tesseract). Deadline to form project groups | Zhou2023 |
| Part 5: Dataflow Architectures | |||
| Mon 02/10 | WaveScalar |
Papadopoulos1990 (Monsoon), Gebhart2009 (TRIPS) | Swanson2003 |
| Wed 02/12 | Pipestitch: An Energy-minimal Dataflow Architecture with Lightweight Threads |
Agarwal2024 (TYR dataflow) | Serafin2023 |
| Fri 02/14 | Day of meetings to discuss Project Proposal ideas |
||
| Mon 02/17 | Midterm #1 |
In-class paper exam [midterm1-practice-exam, midterm1-practice-solutions] | |
| Wed 02/19 | Project: Proposal |
Proposal Report due by 11:59 pm | |
| Part 6: 3D Integration | |||
| Fri 02/21 | 3D-Stacked Memory Architectures for Multi-core Processors |
Qureshi2012 (Alloy) | Loh2008 |
| Mon 02/24 | Designing Vertical Processors in Monolithic 3D |
Student presentations. Kim2023 (NOMAD DRAM cache) | Gopireddy2019 |
| Part 7: Approximate Computing | |||
| Wed 02/26 | Neural Acceleration for General Purpose Approximate Programs |
Esmaeilzadeh2012 | |
| Fri 02/28 | Load Value Approximation |
Student presentations. Shahroodi2023 (non-ideal memory) | Miguel2014 |
| Mon 03/03 | No CMU classes - Spring break |
||
| Wed 03/05 | No CMU classes - Spring break |
||
| Fri 03/07 | No CMU classes - Spring break |
||
| Part 8: Architecture Security | |||
| Mon 03/10 | Spectre and Meltdown (Guest Lecture by John Pape, Apple) |
Meltdown | Spectre |
| Wed 03/12 | Flipping Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: An Experimental Study of DRAM Disturbance Errors |
Woo2023 (row hammer mitigation) | Kim2014 |
| Fri 03/14 | Day of meetings to discuss Projects |
||
| Mon 03/17 | Speculative Taint Tracking (STT): A Comprehensive Protection for Speculatively Accessed Data |
Student presentations. Choudhary2021 (speculative privacy tracking) | Yu2019 |
| Wed 03/19 | Project: Interim Report |
Interim Project Report due by 11:59 pm | |
| Part 9: GPUs & Domain-specific Accelerators | |||
| Fri 03/21 | NVIDIA Tesla: A Unified Graphics and Computing Architecture |
Park2024 (GPU address translation) | Lindholm2008 |
| Mon 03/24 | Tartan: Micorarchitecting a Robotic Processor |
Bakhshalipour2023 (RoWild robotics benchmark), Neuman2023 (RoboShape) | Bakhshalipour2024 |
| Wed 03/26 | In-datacenter Performance Analysis of a Tensor Processing Unit |
Student presentations. Gong2022 (Graphite) | Jouppi2017 |
| Fri 03/28 | Day of meetings to discuss Projects |
||
| Part 10: Cache Replacement & Branch Prediction | |||
| Mon 03/31 | Back to the Future: Leveraging Beladys Algorithm for Improved Cache Replacement |
Balaji2021 (P-OPT replacement) | Jain2016 |
| Wed 04/02 | Branch Prediction (Guest lecture by Mo Al-Ottom, Apple) |
Zangeneh2020 (BranchNet predictor) | Seznec2011 |
| Fri 04/04 | No CMU classes - Spring Carnival |
||
| Mon 04/07 | Midterm #2 |
In-class paper exam | |
| Wed 04/09 | No class |
||
| Fri 04/11 | No class |
||
| Mon 04/14 | No class |
||
| Wed 04/16 | No class |
||
| Fri 04/18 | Day of meetings to discuss Projects |
||
| Mon 04/21 | No class |
||
| Wed 04/23 | No class |
||
| Fri 04/25 | No class |
||
| Thu 05/01 | Project: Presentations (tentative date) |
||
| Fri 05/02 | Project: Final Report (tentative date) |
Final Report due by 11:59 pm | |
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