Announcements
- Jan 14: First day of classes.
- Jan 10: Course webpage launched.
Course Overview
Title: Seminar in Perspectives in Computer Architecture
Description:This course will provide various perspectives in the field of computer architecture by world renowned scientists. The course will bring together basic architecture principles and designs of uniprocessor and multicore computers. First, we will introduce concepts, notations, attributes and computational elements emerged over several thousands of years. Computational elements pre and post 1900 (e.g., memory, processing and I/O elements of Babbage's Analytic Engine, Turing and Von Neumann machines) will be compared and contrasted. Second, we will identify factors that contributed to the many-fold improvements in computer performance, size, and power consumption over the last 60 years. Students will further recognize the architectural challenges imposed by the 21's century emerging applications and unfold the reasons behind the recent slowdown in performance, size and power improvements. Third, we will present few basic architectural techniques including instruction level parallelism, pipelining and memory hierarchy. An overview of multicore architectures, specifically on how they differ from uniprocessor ones, the promises they offer, and the serious challenges they pose, will also be provided. Lastly, we will survey a range of architecture types from digestible (e.g., sensors) to the largest and fastest (e.g., Clouds and supercomputers), how they came across and which to choose when. As a case use, we will focus on mobile systems, their different deployments, usage models, and challenges. The concepts delivered in the lectures will be reinforced and extended through student presentations on multiple directions in computer architecture.
Units: 6
Pre-requisites: A grade of "C" or better in 15-213 Introduction to Computer Systems
Logistics
Instructors
Gordon Bell gbell@microsoft.com, Room 2085, Phone TBD. Office hours: Wednesday, 11am-12pm
Mohammad Hammoud mhhammou@qatar.cmu.edu, CMUQ 1013, 4454-8506. Office hours: Thursday, 11am-12pm
Raj Reddy rr@cmu.edu, Room 2109, Phone 4454-8602. Office hours: Wednesday, 11am-12pm
Majd F. Sakr msakr@qatar.cmu.edu, CMUQ 1016, 4454-8625. Office hours: Tuesday, 3-4pm
Daniel P. Siewiorek dps@cs.cmu.edu, By Skype from CMU Pittsburgh. Office hours: Thursday, 4pm-5pm
Chuck Thacker cthacker@microsoft.com, Room 2085, Phone TBD. Office hours: Wednesday, 11am-12pm
Class hours
Lectures: Monday and Wednesday, 8:30 - 9:50 AM, Room 2147