CS570 Advanced Computer Architecture (3 cr. sect. 1) -- Fall 2007
- Lecture
- 6:25-9:05pm, Thursday, Stuart Building
- Prerequest
- CS470 or equivalent
Contents
All information provide here in are tentative and subject to
minor change
General Information
- Instructor
-
Xian-He Sun, email: sun@iit.edu
Office Hours
1:30-2:30pm, Monday, 4:30 to 5:30p.m. Thursday 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. Topics may include: instruction set design; processor
micro-architecture and pipelining; cache and virtual memory organizations;
protection and sharing; I/O and interrupts; in-order and out-of-order superscalar
architectures; VLIW machines; vector supercomputers; multithreaded architectures;
symmetric multiprocessors; and parallel computers.
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 Patterson and Hennessy. 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
- John L. Hennessy David A. Patterson
- Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (4th Edition)
- Morgan Kaufmann, 2006, ISBN: 978-0-12-370490-0
(see here
for additional resources related to the text.)
- Recommended
- William Stallings
- Computer Organization and Architecture: Designing for Performance, 7/E
- Prentice Hall, 2006, ISBN: 0-13-185644-8
(see here
for additional resources related to the text.)
On-Line Resources
Computer Architecture
Web site
Lecture Script
- Introduction
- Performance and Cost
- Arithmetic
- Datapath design
- Pipelining
- Superscalar
- Memory Technology
- Memory Hierarchies
- I/O
- Parallel Processing
Assignments
Assignments will be given. Normally these will be due in
two weeks. Large assignments and the term project will
be given longer periods of time.
Solutions
Solutions of the homeworks and program assignments may
be provided from time to time to meet the need.
- Homework 1 solution
HTML
- Homework 2 solution
HTML
Term Project
Communication
The course will use blackboard for communication.
On individual matters, please feel free to contact your instructor
via email.
Evaluation
- 35% -- Homework, Programming Assignment
- 35% -- Exam
- 30% -- Term Project