CS7080 Computer Architecture (3 cr. sect. 1) -- Spring 1999
- Lecture
- 1:40-3:00 pm, M.W. 144 Coates Hall
- Prerequest
- CS7002 or equivalent
Contents
All information provide here in are tentative and subject to
minor change
General Information
- Instructor
-
Xian-He Sun, email: sun@csc.lsu.edu
Office Hours
3:10 to 4:10 p.m. T. Th. or by appointment
Course Description
This course is about advanced computer architecture.
It teaches the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware
components to create a computer that meets functional, performance and
cost goals, and teaches the qualitative and quantitative examination of
computer design tradeoffs.
This course covers the design of traditional sequential
machines, advanced parallel computers, and the newly emerged
network clustering architectures.
We will learn, for example, how uniprocessors execute many instructions
concurrently and why state-of-the-art memory systems are nearly as complex
as processors, and etc.
We will follow the text by Hwang and Xu. Assignments will include
problems from the end of the chapters as will as some selected
exercises.
For the last part of the course we will read
an assortment of papers and work on different term projects.
Topics include:
- Computer Platforms and Models
- Performance Metrics and Benchmarks
- Microprocessors
- Memory Technology
- System Interconnects and Gigabit Network
- Parallel Architecture
- Clusters of Servers and Workstations
Course Materials
- Text
- K. Hwang and Z. Xu
- Scalable Parallel Computing
- Mcgraw-Hill Inc., 1998
(see here
for additional resources related to the text.)
- Recommended
- John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson
- Computer Organization and Design:
The Hardware and Software Interface
- Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Second Edition, 1997
On-Line Resources
Computer Architecture
Web site
Lecture Script
- Evolution of Computer Architecture
- Design Principles
- System and Application Benchmarks
- Performance of Parallel Computers
- Principles of Processor Design
- Case Studies of Miroprocessors
- Cache Coherence Protocols
- Shared-Memory Consistency
- SMP and CC-NUMA Technology
- The SGI/Cray Origin 2000 Superserver
- MPP Technology
- Cluster Products and the Berkeley Now Project
Assignments
Assignments will be given each week. Normally these will be due in
two weeks. Large assignments and the term project will
be given longer periods of time.
Communication
The course alias `cs7080' will be
used to post announcements about assignments, exams, and any relevant
information to your class account. You are also encouraged to use it
to post questions related to the course or share related information with the
class.
On individual matters, please feel free to contact your instructor
via email.
Evaluation
- 40% -- Homework, Programming Assignment
- 40% -- Exam
- 20% -- Term Project