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Administrative Stuff : Instructor

This document summarizes the first lecture of CSCI 343 Fall 2013. It introduces the instructor, course website, prerequisites of basic computer organization, and grading scheme. Academic misconduct will result in an automatic F grade. The goals of the course are to understand computer architecture concepts like pipelining and parallelism, gain experience with simulators, and understand quantitative experiments. Computer architecture is defined as selecting hardware components to meet goals of function, performance, and cost. The lecture discusses how computer architecture is shaped by applications, technology changes, and balancing design constraints like performance, cost, power and reliability.

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80 views8 pages

Administrative Stuff : Instructor

This document summarizes the first lecture of CSCI 343 Fall 2013. It introduces the instructor, course website, prerequisites of basic computer organization, and grading scheme. Academic misconduct will result in an automatic F grade. The goals of the course are to understand computer architecture concepts like pipelining and parallelism, gain experience with simulators, and understand quantitative experiments. Computer architecture is defined as selecting hardware components to meet goals of function, performance, and cost. The lecture discusses how computer architecture is shaped by applications, technology changes, and balancing design constraints like performance, cost, power and reliability.

Uploaded by

adchy7
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 8

8/31/2013

CSCI 343 FALL 2013 LECT 1


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Administrative Stuff
Instructor
Vivek Upadhyay ([email protected])

Lectures/Readings
Online On course web site

Course Web Site


Schedule, lecture notes, assignments

http://venus.cs.qc.cuny.edu/~vivek/

Prerequisites
CSCI 240 WITH A GRADE OF C OR BETTER Basic computer organization an absolute must
Basic digital logic: gates, boolean functions, latches Binary arithmetic: adders, hardware mul/div, floating-point Basic data path: ALU, register file, memory interface, muxes Basic control: single-cycle control, microcode Familiarity with assembly language

8/31/2013

Grading
Tentative grade contributions:
Exams: 60%
2 Class Exams 30% each

Final: 40% cumulative

Typical grade distributions


A, A-: 20% B-, B, B+: 40% C, C+: 20% F: 0% (there is NO C-, D, D+, or D- grade) W: 20%

Academic Misconduct
Cheating will not be tolerated
General rule: Only outcome of cheating is Course Grade = F Note on permanent record

Course Goals
See the big ideas in computer architecture
Pipelining, parallelism, caching, locality, abstraction, etc.

Exposure to examples of good (and some bad) engineering Understanding computer performance and metrics
Experimental evaluation/analysis (science in computer science) Gain experience with simulators (architects tool of choice) Understanding quantitative data and experiments

Get exposure to research and cutting edge ideas


Read some research literature (i.e., papers)

My role: trick you into learning something

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What is Computer Architecture?


HLL Compiler ASM Processor Memor y Input/Output

What is Computer Architecture?


Computer Architecture is the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals. - WWW Computer Architecture Page

An analogy to architecture of buildings

What is Computer Architecture?

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What is Computer Architecture?

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Why Study Computer Architecture?


Understand where computers are going
Future capabilities drive the (computing) world Real world-impact: no computer architecture no computers!

Understand high-level design concepts


The best architects understand all the levels Device, circuits, architecture, compiler, applications

Understand computer performance


Writing well-tuned (fast) software requires knowledge of hardware

Write better software


The best software designers also understand hardware Need to understand hardware to write fast software

Design hardware
At Intel, AMD, IBM, ARM, Qualcomm, Oracle, NVIDIA, Samsung

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Computer Architecture Is Different


Age of discipline
60 years (vs. five thousand years)

Rate of change
All three factors (technology, applications, goals) are changing Quickly

Automated mass production


Design advances magnified over millions of chips

Boot-strapping effect
Better computers help design next generation

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Functional

Design Goals & Constraints

Needs to be correct
And unlike software, difficult to update once deployed

What functions should it support (Turing completeness aside)

Reliable
Does it continue to perform correctly? Hard fault vs transient fault Google story - memory errors and sun spots Space satellites vs desktop vs server reliability

High performance
Fast is only meaningful in the context of a set of important tasks Not just Gigahertz truck vs sports car analogy Impossible goal: fastest possible design for all programs

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Design Goals & Constraints


Low cost
Per unit manufacturing cost (wafer cost) Cost of making first chip after design (mask cost) Design cost (huge design teams, why? Two reasons)

Low power/energy
Energy in (battery life, cost of electricity) Energy out (cooling and related costs) Cyclic problem, very much a problem today

Challenge: balancing the relative importance of these goals


And the balance is constantly changing No goal is absolutely important at expense of all others Our focus: performance, only touch on cost, power, reliability

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Shaping Force: Applications/Domains


Another shaping force: applications (usage and context)
Applications and application domains have different requirements
Domain: group with similar character

Lead to different designs

Scientific: weather prediction, genome sequencing


First computing application domain: naval ballistics firing tables Need: large memory, heavy-duty floating point Examples: CRAY T3E, IBM BlueGene

Commercial: database/web serving, e-commerce, Google


Need: data movement, high memory + I/O bandwidth Examples: Sun Enterprise Server, AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon

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8/31/2013

More Recent Applications/Domains


Desktop: home office, multimedia, games
Need: integer, memory bandwidth, integrated graphics/network? Examples: Intel Core 2, Core i7, AMD Athlon

Mobile: laptops, mobile phones


Need: low power, integer performance, integrated wireless Laptops: Intel Core 2 Mobile, Atom, AMD Turion Smaller devices: ARM chips by Samsung, Qualcomm; Intel Atom

Embedded: microcontrollers in automobiles, door knobs


Need: low power, low cost Examples: ARM chips, dedicated digital signal processors (DSPs) Over 6 billion ARM cores sold in 2010 (multiple per phone)

Deeply Embedded: disposable smart dust sensors


Need: extremely low power, extremely low cost

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Application Specific Designs


This class is about general-purpose CPUs
Processor that can do anything, run a full OS, etc. E.g., Intel Core i7, AMD Athlon, IBM Power, ARM, Intel Itanium

In contrast to application-specific chips


Or ASICs (Application specific integrated circuits)
Also application-domain specific processors

Implement critical domain-specific functionality in hardware


Examples: video encoding, 3D graphics

General rules
- Hardware is less flexible than software + Hardware more effective (speed, power, cost) than software + Domain specific more parallel than general purpose
But general mainstream processors becoming more parallel

Trend: from specific to general (for a specific domain)

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Constant Change: Technology

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Technology
Basic element
Solid-state transistor (i.e., electrical switch) Building block of integrated circuits (ICs)

Whats so great about ICs? Everything


+ High performance, high reliability, low cost, low power + Lever of mass production

Several kinds of integrated circuit families


SRAM/logic: optimized for speed (used for processors) DRAM: optimized for density, cost, power (used for memory) Flash: optimized for density, cost (used for storage) Increasing opportunities for integrating multiple technologies

Non-transistor storage and inter-connection technologies


Disk, optical storage, ethernet, fiber optics, wireless

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Managing This Mess


Architect must consider all factors
Goals/constraints, applications, implementation technology

Questions
How to deal with all of these inputs? How to manage changes?

Answers
Accrued institutional knowledge (stand on each others shoulders) Experience, rules of thumb Discipline: clearly defined end state, keep your eyes on the ball Abstraction and layering

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General hints to reach CS343 nirvana


Remember the big picture. What are we trying to accomplish, and why? Read the lecture notes. Talk to each other. You can learn a lot from other students, both by asking and answering questions. Find some good partners to study with (but make sure you all understand whats going on). Help me help you. Ask lots of questions!

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8/31/2013

Now what?
See Me Right Now:
You have any other questions about prerequisites or the course. See you Tuesday Lecture notes will be posted over the weekend for next 3 week print /download

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