Course pages 2013–14

Comparative Architectures

Lecture Notes

or each lecture 1-up

Supervisions

Reading

Appendices for newer versions of the Hennessy and Patterson book are available online. You can get them via the book's website or cached locally below.

D E F G H I J K

Lectures 1-3: I suggest you read the first Chapter of Hennessy and Patterson. Appendix B. may also be useful (this is Chapter 2 in the 3rd Edition).

Lectures 4-7: Chapter 2 of Hennessy and Patterson. Chapter 3. will probably also be useful.

Lecture 7: Appendex G in Hennessy and Patterson (this is covered in Chapter 4 in the 3rd Edition)

Lecture 8: Finish reading Chapter 3.

Lecture 9 and 10: Appendix C and Chapter 5.

Lecture 11: If you need further explanations read Appendix F (on CD).

Lecture 12 and 13: Chapter 4.

Lecture 14: "Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks", Dally/Towles is an excellent book if you want to go into more detail or clarify any particular areas.

Additional Material

Additional material for each lecture has been provided in recent years by Dr. Robert Mullins on the course wiki to help you go beyond the basic material. These papers and reports may clarify elements of the course or simply help you explore aspects that you find particularly interesting. It is certainly not a requirement for you to read and understand the additional material.

Link to course wiki. Older additional material can be found here.

Branch Prediction Competition

The competition wiki page from last year is still available. The rules for this year are the same, but please submit code and a brief description on or before Monday 3rd March 2014. There will be a prize for the winner at the final lecture (11th March).

Errata and Clarifications

Lecture 2, slide 12: The first bullet point should read “Mispredicting an outcome or value may undoing, forcing us to roolback speculative changes”.
Lecture 2, slide 47: The auto decrememnt assembly code (middle column) should read
```
LD R4, (R1)-
```
Lecture 5, slide 27: The first bullet point should read “The compiler is often unable to produce the best schedule. It is limited by:”.
Lecture 7, slide 17: There should be an
```
STW R2, [X]
```
in the first column on line 5. This whole line should be black and is not part of the prolog (lines 1 - 4 are).

Computer Laboratory