Schedule

Slides (PPTX and PDF) and lecture videos will be linked next to each lecture as the semester progresses.

DateLectures
Week 1: Introduction and Foundation
Sep 17
  • L1a: Course Info and Logistics [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L1b: Computer Organization and Design Principles: Introduction and Basics [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA · Readings]
Week 2: Pipelined Microarchitecture Fundamentals
Sep 21
  • L2a: ISA Design Principles [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L2b: Performance Evaluation [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L2c: Trends, Tradeoffs and Design Fundamentals of Computer Architecture [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Sep 24
  • L3a: In-Order Pipelined CPU Design, Hazards, and Data Forwarding [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L3b: Precise Exceptions and Interrupts [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
HW 1 assigned: Single-Cycle vs In-Order Pipeline Architectures — handout: TBA · repo: TBA
Week 3: Out-of-Order Execution
Sep 28
  • L4a: Out-of-Order Pipeline Design [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L4b: Tomasulo's Algorithm [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L4c: High Performance Substrate (HPS) and Checkpoint Repair [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA · Readings]
Oct 1 No lecture
Week 4: Memory Subsystem
Oct 5
  • L5a: Von Neumann Architecture and Memory Subsystem Overview [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L5b: Virtual Memory and Translation Lookaside Buffer [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L5c: Critical Paper Reviews in Computer Architecture [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Bonus HW assigned: Paper Reviews — handout: TBA · repo: TBA
Oct 8
  • L6a: Simplescalar and Superscalar [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L6b: Dataflow and VLIW [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA · Readings]
Week 5: Memory Stalls, Pipeline Stalls
Oct 12
  • L7a: Cache Organization and Design [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L7b: DRAM Architecture [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L7c: Memory Request Scheduling [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Oct 15
  • L8a: Pipeline Stalls, Loop unrolling [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L8b: Prefetching [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L8c: Branch Prediction [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
HW 1 due — submission: TBA  ·  HW 2 assigned: Caching, Prefetching, and Branch Prediction — handout: TBA · repo: TBA
Week 6: Speculative Execution
Oct 19
  • L9: Speculative Execution from a Security Perspective (Subject to Change) (Guest Lecture by Michael Schwarz) [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Oct 22
  • L10: Runahead Execution [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Week 7: Multi-Core Architectures
Oct 26
  • L11a: Multi-Core Architecture [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L11b: Memory Consistency [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Oct 29 No lectures
Week 8: Parallel Execution and GPU Architecture
Nov 2
  • L12: Cache Architecture [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
HW 2 due — submission: TBA  ·  HW 3 assigned: Out-of-Order and Speculative Execution (Bonus: Spectre and Meltdown) — handout: TBA · repo: TBA
Nov 5
  • L13a: Parallelism, Heterogeneity, Flynn's Taxonomy [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L13b: GPU Architecture and Predicated Execution [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Week 9: Midterm Week
Nov 9
  • LR1: Review Session [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Nov 12 Midterm Exam
Week 10: Memory Robustness
Nov 16
  • L14a: Data Retention and Refresh [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L14b: Read Disturbance I: RowHammer, RowPress, and ColumnPress [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Nov 19
  • L15a: Read Disturbance II: Mitigations [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L15b: Memory Performance and Cold Boot Attacks [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Week 11: Emerging and Killed Memory Architectures
Nov 23
  • L16a: Phase-Change Memory, STT-MRAM, Resistive Memory [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L16b: Monolithic 3D Integration [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Nov 26
  • L17: NAND Flash Memory [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
HW 3 due — submission: TBA  ·  HW 4 assigned: Memory Scheduling — handout: TBA · repo: TBA
Week 12: Memory-Centric Computation
Nov 30
  • L18a: Processing Near and Using Memory [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L18b: Processing Near and Using Flash Memory [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Dec 3
  • L19: Memory Centric Computing (guest lecture by Geraldo F. de Oliveira Jr., Huawei Zurich) [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Week 13: System on Chip
Dec 7
  • L20a: Accelerators, Systolic Arrays [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L20b: Neuromorphic Computation [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Dec 10
  • L21a: On-Chip Networks [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L21b: Interrupts and Polling [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Week 14: Application-Oriented Architectures
Dec 14
  • L22a: Neural Networks and LLM Accelerators [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L22b: Architecture Solutions to Bioinformatics Workloads [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
Dec 17
  • L23a: Agent-based Simulations [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
  • L23b: Graph Accelerators [PPTX: TBA · PDF: TBA · Video: TBA]
HW 4 due — submission: TBA
Week 15: Final Exam
Dec 21 Review Session
Bonus HW due — submission: TBA  ·  Late Submission Cut-Off for All Labs
Dec 24 Final Exam

Course Information

Basic hardware structure of modern computing platforms: memory systems, storage systems, interconnects, multiprocessors, accelerators, hardware/software cooperation. Key issues in performance, efficiency, scalability, reliability, security, safety, predictability, and quality of service.

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Contact

Course Q&A — ask course-related questions publicly.

Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı
Instructor, Faculty at CISPA
giray@cispa.de
https://agyaglikci.github.io

Namhun Kim
Teaching Assistant, Researcher at CISPA
namhun.kim@cispa.de
https://cispa.de/de/people/c01naki

Amina Sokoli
Teaching Assistant, Guest Researcher at CISPA
aminasokoli0602@outlook.com
https://aminatpwk.github.io/