University of New York Tirana

Komuna e Parisit,Tirana, Albania

Tel.: 00355-(0)4-273056-8 – Fax: 00355-(0)4-273059

Web Site Address: http://www.unyt.edu.al

Advanced Topics in Computer Architecture

2009-2010

Course            : Advanced Topics in Computer Architecture

Instructor       :  Dr. Marenglen Biba

Office              : Faculty building 1^st floor

Office Hours   : Wednesday 15-17 or by appointment

Phone              : 42273056 or ext. 112

E-mail              : marenglenbiba@unyt.edu.al

Course page   : http://www.marenglenbiba.net/comparch/

Aims: To enable students to explore advanced computer architecture topics and expose them to recent developments in computer architecture research. This course aims to provide advanced theoretical topics of computer architectures with a focus on the techniques of quantitative analysis and evaluation of modern computing systems, such as the selection of appropriate benchmarks to reveal and compare the performance of alternative design choices in system design. Students will learn about major component subsystems of high performance computers: pipelining, instruction level parallelism, memory hierarchies, input/output, and network-oriented interconnections. The course will provide a solid foundation for IT professionals/academics interested in the theory and practice of complex and advanced computer architectures.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the course the student should be able to:

A. Understand and evaluate the hardware components of advanced architectures

B. Understand and analyze architectures performance and select among different ones for particular use scenarios.

C. Understand and analyze the most important parallel architectures in order to distinguish their main differences.

D. Understand and use simulation and evaluation tools for advanced computer architectures

Content:

Fine Grain Parallelism,

· Instruction level parallelism,

· Data Parallel Architectures

Coarse Grain Parallelism “MIMD”

· Shared Memory Multiprocessors

· Message Passing Multiprocessors

Interconnection Networks for Parallel Systems

Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) Architecture

Learning and Teaching Activities:

Concepts will be introduced in lectures.

Assessment Details:

Methods of Assessment	Please identify the LAST item of assessment that a student sits with a tick	Grading Mode	Weighting %	Minimum Pass Mark	Word Length	Outline Details
Coursework			40	50%	4000	a) Group project Case study Covering Learning Outcomes: D
Examination	Ö		60	50%		Covering Learning Outcomes: A,B,C

Is the student required to pass ALL elements of assessment in order to pass the course?

YES

Indicative Texts:

ISBN Number	Author	Date	Title	Publisher
978-0123704900	Hennessy & Patterson	2006	Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th Ed.	Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

Software Requirements:

WinMIPS64, M5 Simulator  

Course Material

1. Fundamentals of Computer Design
2. Pipelining: Basic and Intermediate Concepts
3. Instruction-Level Parallelism and Its Exploitation
4. Limits on Instruction Level Parallelism
5. Multiprocessors and Thread-Level Parallelism
6. Interconnection Networks for Parallel Systems
7. Data Level Parallelism: Vector Processors
8. Practice with Benchmarking and Simulation

Test

Project

Assembly Code