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Computer Science Syllabus - Comparative Architectures
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Comparative Architectures

Lecturer: Dr D.J. Greaves

No. of lectures: 16

Prerequisite course: Computer Design

Aims

This course examines the evolution of high-performance computers and processors and discusses the difficulties associated with making objective performance comparisons and maintaining code compatibility. The IBM System 360 is used as a reference architecture. Microprocessor evolution from 8 bits though to 64 is presented, along with important digressions to low-power, dataflow and VLIW architectures, since these techniques now underlie mainstream processor implementation. Detailed features of a number of popular Instruction Set Architectures are compared and contrasted, with particular attention to their effects on implementation and hence performance. The course addresses micro-architecture implementation issues, examining how Instruction Level Parallelism can be exploited through deep pipelining and super-scalar techniques such as out-of-order execution. Issues in memory hierarchy design are explored, and the impact they have on code optimisation. Multi-processor cluster interconnect, on chip and off chip, is briefly examined.

Lectures

  • Instruction set architectures. ISA history and compatibility, illustrated with IBM 360 and notable 8, 16, 32, 64 microprocessors. Review of stack/accumulator/GPR instruction sets in terms of byte sex, load-store versus register-memory, addressing modes, sub and un-aligned memory support. [3 lectures]

  • Comparing architectures. Moore's Law, System versus chip performance. Performance metrics MIPS, MHz, FLOPS, SPEC. Power. Price. Compatibility [2 lectures]

  • Advanced pipelining. The CPU performance equation. Structural hazards: long latency instructions. Data hazards: result forwarding and delayed loads. Control hazards: branch prediction, trace caches and avoiding branches. Exceptions. [3 lectures]

  • Super-scalar techniques. Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP). Dynamic out-of-order execution: Tomasulo, embedded dataflow, virtual registers. [2 lectures]

  • Beyond super-scalar. The limits of ILP. Alternative architectures: VLIW processors and custom VLIW synthesis, Tri-media, SMT, SCMP [2 lectures]

  • Memory hierarchy. Cache configurations. Latency versus bandwidth. Re-ordering and coherence. Programming for caches. [2 lectures]

  • Multi-processor systems. Multi-core devices, multi-processor cache coherency. Interconnects for NUMA, message passing clusters and network on chip: OCP, ARM AXI. Models for weak memory ordering. [2 lectures]

Objectives

At the end of the course students should

  • appreciate the balance between implementation and architecture in determining performance

  • understand how quantitative analysis led to the convergence towards RISC-like designs

  • comprehend the issues associated with deeply-pipelined designs

  • understand the operation of processors supporting out-of-order execution

  • be able to describe the difficulties associated with building wide-issue machines, and have a basic understanding of the alternatives to Instruction Level Parallelism

  • appreciate the tradeoffs made by architects in the design of memory hierarchies, and be able to optimise algorithms for memory hierarchy performance

Recommended reading

Hennessy, J. & Patterson, D. (2002). Computer architecture: a quantitative approach. Morgan Kaufmann (3rd ed.) ISBN 1-55860-724-2. (2nd edition, 1996, is also good.)

Further reading and reference:

Johnson, M. (1991). Superscalar microprocessor design. Prentice Hall.
Markstein, P. (1990). IA-64 and elementary functions. Prentice Hall.
Tannenbaum, A.S. (1990). Structured computer organization. Prentice Hall (2nd ed.).
Van Someren, A. & Atack, C. (1994). The ARM RISC chip: a programmer's guide. Addison-Wesley.
Sites, R.L. (ed.) (1992). Alpha architecture reference manual. Digital Press.
Kane, G. & Heinrich, J. (1992). MIPS RISC architecture. Prentice Hall.
The CPU Info Center http://infopad.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/tech/



next up previous contents
Next: Computer Systems Modelling Up: Lent Term 2007: Part Previous: Bioinformatics   Contents
Christine Northeast
Tue Sep 12 09:56:33 BST 2006