Computer Architecture

• Instructor: Jim Huang (黃敬群) <jserv.tw@gmail.com>
• Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/system.software2020/
• Policy
  • Follow the classes: CS 61C at UC Berkeley, CS152/252: Computer Architecture
• Course grading
  • Quiz (20%), Homework (40%), Final Project (40%)

Computer Architecture (Fall 2020)

• Week 1 (Sep 8)

  • David Patterson: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture: History, Challenges and Opportunities / video
    • Article, note
  • David Patterson: From Mainframe CPUs to Neural-Network TPUs and Open RISC-V / video
  • Great Ideas in Computer Architecture, Intro / video
  • Number Representation
  • Floating Point
  • C Memory Management / video

• Week 2 (Sep 15): Quiz (C programming, bit-wise operations, number representation, floating-point)

• Week 3 (Sep 22): RISC-V

  • Lab0: Web-based Emulators
  • Introduction to RISC-V Assembly language : Arithmetic
    • The RISC-V Instruction Set Manual: Volume I: Unprivileged ISA, RV32I

• Week 4 (Sep 29): RISC-V

  • RISC-V lw, sw, Decisions I / video
  • RISC-V Decisions II
  • RISC-V Procedure
  • Lab1: R32I Simulator
  • Practice: Floating Point + RISC-V Intro
  • Assignment: Homework1: RISC-V Assembly and Instruction Pipeline (Due: ?)

• Week 5 (Oct 6):

• Week 6 (Oct 13): RISC-V and Toolchain

  • Lab2: RISC-V RV32I[MA] emulator with ELF support
  • RISC-V Instruction Formats I / video
  • Compilation, Assembly, Linking, Loading
  • Assignment: Homework2: RISC-V Toolchain (Due: ?)
  • Further reading FPGA design for Software Engineers

• Week 7 (Oct 20): RISC-V and Digital Systems

  • ANN: Next week, we will have another quiz.
  • RISC-V Procedures
  • Practice: RISC-V Control Flow, CALL, RISC-V Procedures
  • Practice: CS 152 Computer Architecture and Engineering - Midterm #1
    • Problem 2: Microcoding: writing microcode for a bus-based implementation of the RISC-V machine
    • Problem 3: 5-Stage Pipelines
  • Intro to Synchronous Digital Systems / video
    • handout
    • nand2tetris
  • State
  • Combinational Logic
  • Combinational Logic Blocks / video
  • Practice: Logic

• Week 8 (Oct 27): Datapath

  • Lab3: Reindeer - RISCV RV32I[M] Soft CPU
  • Single-Cycle CPU Datapath I
  • Single-Cycle CPU Datapath II
  • Single-Cycle CPU Control / video
  • Quiz
  • Assignment: Homework3: SoftCPU (Due: ?)

• Week 9 (Nov 3): Pipeline

  • video: Are Computers Still Getting Faster?
  • MIT 6.004 L15: Introduction to Pipelining, L16: Processor Pipelining, L17: Implementing Pipelining
    • Lectures and Recitations
  • Practice: RISC-V Single Cycle Datapath
  • IEET Questionnaire Survey

• Week 10 (Nov 10): Pipelined Processors

  • News: Next Generation of On-Device Vision Models: MobileNetV3 and MobileNetEdgeTPU
  • RISC-V: Why the ISA battles are not over yet
  • L18: Implementing Pipelined Processors
  • Complex Pipelines, Out-of-Order Issue, Register Renaming
  • Practice: Pipelining, RISC-V Pipelining and Hazards
  • Quiz

• Week 11 (Nov 17): Cache

  • Cache / video
    • Practice: Cache
  • Quiz

• Week 12 (Nov 24): Virtual Memory

  • The golden age of ever-changing computer architecture
  • Virtual Memory / video
    • Practice: Virtual Memory
  • Quiz

• Week13 (Dec 1): State-of-the-Art mobile computing & Synchronization

  • Processors in 5G era: Cortex-A77 + Cortex-A55
    • Mediatek: Bringing 5G to Everyone
    • Qualcomm Introduces the World’s Most Advanced 5G Mobile Platform
  • The Race to Exascale at Supercomputer 2019
    • zh_TW translation
  • Term projects (due date: Jan 5, 2020)
    • explore the workings of virtual memory, specifically the TLB and the Page Table
    • Implement RISC-V Compressed Instruction Set on rv32emu
    • Implement RISC-V Compressed Instruction Set for Reindeer, based on pull request RV32C support. must be validated on Step CYC10 FPGA board.
    • Contribute to Ripes: pick up pending issues, work on them, and finally send pull request(s).
    • Prepare practical tutorials for VSRTL, thus people can follow the instructions for implementing minimal RISC-V core such as minrv32.
    • Analyze spu32 with Yosys open synthesis suite. Explain how it works and validate it.
    • Analyze VexRiscv. Explain how it works and validate it.
    • Modify Reindeer to allow non-trial interactive games on Step CYC10 FPGA board, based on Reindeer_Step and Zephyr RTOS.
  • Synchronization / video

• Week14 (Dec 8): Synchronization

  • Intel’s SGX coughs up crypto keys when scientists tweak CPU voltage
  • Attacking the ARM’s TrustZone / video: ARM TrustZone for dummies
  • Synchronization / video
    • Advanced topics
  • Thread-Level Parallelism / video
  • Quiz

• Week15 (Dec 15): I/O and Cache Coherence

  • Announce: Last quiz on Dec 26, Review final project on Jan 2
  • I/O: Devices, Polling, Interrupts / video
    • Traps/Interrupts/Exceptions
    • Trap Handling in 5-Stage Pipeline
  • Cache Coherence / video
    • Modern microprocessors usually have 2 to 8 cores where each core has a private cache for performance
    • Modified/Shared/Invalid (MSI) Protocol, MESI: An Enhanced MSI protocol to increased performance for private read-write data
  • Modern Processor Architecture / video

• Week16 (Dec 22): Review and Branch Prediction

  • video: The Future of Operating Systems on RISC-V / transcript
  • Introduction to Dynamic Branch Prediction, Advanced Branch Prediction, Tournament Predictors and Branch Prediction Accuracy, Hardware Based Speculation
  • quiz
  • Table for Term Project

• Week17 (Dec 29): Term Project Review

  • Datacenters & Cloud Computing
    • video: Inside a Google data center, Inside Facebook’s Oregon data center
  • Term Project Table