263-2211-00L  Seminar in Computer Architecture

SemesterSpring Semester 2020
LecturersO. Mutlu, M. H. K. Alser, J. Gómez Luna
Periodicityevery semester recurring course
Language of instructionEnglish
CommentNumber of participants limited to 22.

The deadline for deregistering expires at the end of the second week of the semester. Students who are still registered after that date, but do not attend the seminar, will officially fail the seminar.


AbstractThis seminar course covers fundamental and cutting-edge research papers in computer architecture. It has multiple components that are aimed at improving students' (1) technical skills in computer architecture, (2) critical thinking and analysis abilities on computer architecture concepts, as well as (3) technical presentation of concepts and papers in both spoken and written forms.
ObjectiveThe main objective is to learn how to rigorously analyze and present papers and ideas on computer architecture. We will have rigorous presentation and discussion of selected papers during lectures and a written report delivered by each student at the end of the semester.

This course is for those interested in computer architecture. Registered students are expected to attend every meeting, participate in the discussion, and create a synthesis report at the end of the course.
ContentTopics will center around computer architecture. We will, for example, discuss papers on hardware security; accelerators for key applications like machine learning, graph processing and bioinformatics; memory systems; interconnects; processing in memory; various fundamental and emerging paradigms in computer architecture; hardware/software co-design and cooperation; fault tolerance; energy efficiency; heterogeneous and parallel systems; new execution models; predictable computing, etc.
Lecture notesAll materials will be posted on the course website: Link
Past course materials, including the synthesis report assignment, can be found in the Fall 2019 website for the course: Link
LiteratureKey papers and articles, on both fundamentals and cutting-edge topics in computer architecture will be provided and discussed. These will be posted on the course website.
Prerequisites / NoticeDesign of Digital Circuits.
Students should (1) have done very well in Design of Digital Circuits and (2) show a genuine interest in Computer Architecture.