CS 203 Advanced Computer Architecture - Winter 2021

Course Information

  • Time and Location: Monday/Wednesday 9:30am - 10:50am Pacific time @ Zoom

  • Instructor: Daniel Wong

    • Email: danwong@ucr.edu
    • Homepage: http://www.danielwong.org
    • Office: not WCH 425 =(
    • Office Hours: Monday @ 3PM

  • TA: No TA for this quarter

  • CampusWire (for discussion board): https://campuswire.com/c/G788FE53A/

  • Github Classroom (for assignment submission)

  • iLearn (for grades and lecture videos on Yuja): http://ilearn.ucr.edu

Announcements

Welcome to CS 203!

Class Syllabus

Class webpage and communication

The class webpage is located at http://teaching.danielwong.org/cs203/winter21

Information, resources, and announcements related to the class will be posted to the webpage.

In addition, we will be using iLearn for assignments, and CampusWire for discussions and help.

Course Description

This graduate level course cover topics in microarchitecture such as pipelining, branch prediction, instruction-level parallelism, dynamic scheduling, speculation, memory hierarchies, and parallel architectures. This course will be project-based. Projects are designed to allow students to gain computer architecture design skills, and to reinforce topics covered from lectures.

Prerequisite: CS 161

Textbook

  • (Required) Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 5th Edition By Hennessy and Patterson
  • (Optional, another great reference book) Parallel Computer Organization and Design By Dubois, Annavaram, and Stenstrom

Grade Breakdown

  • Assignments: 35%
  • Final Project: 20%
  • Midterm Exam: 25%
  • Final Exam: 20%
  • Participation and Extra Credit: 2% bonus

Assignment Policies

  • You have 3 slip days that you can use on any assignment (not project). If you exceed your slip days, there will be a 15% penalty per late day (counting weekends).
  • Slip days CANNOT be applied to the final project. We need ample time to grade the last assignment before grades are due.
  • No extensions for assignments will be given (see slip days). Even if you're one minute late, it will be considered late.
  • All assignments will be due at the end on the day (midnight Pacific time).
  • All assignments should be uploaded to iLearn or Github Classroom as specified.

Policies

  • You are responsible for all materials covered in lectures.
  • All assignments, quizzes, and exams are individual effort.
  • Cheating in assignments, quizzes, projects, and exams are absolutely prohibited. The minimum penalty for a violation of the regulations will be a zero for the assignment; the maximum penalty will be failure in the course.
  • Examinations must be taken in class on the day they are given. There will be no exceptions.

Academic Integrity

Here at UCR we are committed to upholding and promoting the values of the Tartan Soul: Integrity, Accountability, Excellence, and Respect. As a student in this class, it is your responsibility to act in accordance with these values by completing all assignments in the manner described, and by informing the instructor of suspected acts of academic misconduct by your peers. By doing so, you will not only affirm your own integrity, but also the integrity of the intellectual work of this University, and the degree which it represents. Should you choose to commit academic misconduct in this class, you will be held accountable according to the policies set forth by the University, and will incur appropriate consequences both in this class and from Student Conduct and Academic Integrity Programs. For more information regarding University policy and its enforcement, please visit: http://conduct.ucr.edu.

Attendance

It's a pandemic. Attend if you can. =)

However, you are still responsible for keeping up with recorded course lectures and assignments.

Tentative Schedule

The following schedule is tentative and is subject to change.

Note: You need to be logged in to iLearn for the lecture slide and YuJa links to work. The slides are also available directly in iLearn.

Week Date Topic YuJa Slides Assignments
1 January 4, M Introduction, Logistics Lecture 1 Introduction.pdf Class Introduction
1 January 6, W Architecture Trends / Pipelining Lecture 2 ArchitectureTrends.pdf
Pipelining.pdf
2 January 11, M Pipelining (cont.) Lecture 3 Assignment 1 Assigned
2 January 13, W Performance Lecture 4 Performance.pdf
3 January 18, M No Class - MLK Day
3 January 20, W Performance (cont.) / Simulators Lecture 5 Simulators.pdf
4 January 25, M Branch Prediction Lecture 6 BranchPrediction.pdf Assignment 1 Due
Assignment 2 Assigned
4 January 27, W Bracn Prediction (cont.)
ILP - Out-of-Order Scheduling		 Lecture 7 ILP-Dynamic.pdf
Tomasulo.pptx
5 February 1, M ILP (Cont.) Lecture 8 Tomasulo-Superscalar.pdf
5 February 3, W ILP - Speculative Execution Lecture 9 Tomasulo-Speculative
6 February 8, M Midterm Review Lecture 10 Sample Exam
6 February 10, W Midterm Exam Assignment 2 Due
7 February 15, M No Class - Presidents Day
7 February 17, W Memory Hierarchy - Caches Lecture 11 Cache.pdf Assignment 3 Assigned
8 February 22, M Memory Hierarchy - Caches (cont.)
Load Value Prediction		 Lecture 12
Lecture - Caches (cont.)		 LoadValuePrediction.pdf Final Project Assigned
8 February 24, W Virtual Memory Lecture - VM VM.pdf
9 March 1, M TLP / DLP / Accelerators TLP/DLP/Accel
Office Hours - March 2		 TLP-DLP-Acc.pdf
9 March 3, W Guest Lecture - Prof. Nael Abu-Ghazaleh on Microarchitectural security Lecture - Security Security.pptx Assignment 3 Due
March 5, F
10 March 8, M Final Review Lecture - Final Review
Office Hours - March 8		 Sample Exam
10 March 10, W Final Exam
Final March 17, W Final Project Due