Welcome to the Spring 2018 CS152 and CS252 web page. This semester the undergraduate and graduate computer architecture classes will be sharing lectures, and so the course web page has been combined.

CS152 is intended to provide a foundation for students interested in performance programming, compilers, and operating systems, as well as computer architecture and engineering. Our goal is for you to better understand how software interacts with hardware, and to understand how trends in technology, applications, and economics drive continuing changes in the field. The course will cover the different forms of parallelism found in applications (instruction-level, data-level, thread-level, gate-level) and how these can be exploited with various architectural features. We will cover pipelining, superscalar, speculative and out-of-order execution, vector machines, VLIW machines, multithreading, graphics processing units, and parallel microprocessors. We will also explore the design of memory systems including caches, virtual memory, and DRAM. An important part of CS152 is series of lab assignments using real microprocessor designs implemented in the Chisel hardware description language, and running as simulators and FPGA emulators run in the Amazon cloud as F1 instances. These simulators will give you an in-depth look at a variety of processor architectural techniques. Our objective is that you will understand all the major concepts used in modern microprocessors by the end of the semester.

CS252 is intended to provide essential background for students intending to pursue research in computer architecture or related fields, and also provides preparation for the Berkeley EECS computer architecture oral prelim examination. An important part of CS252 is reading and discussion of classic architecture papers, as well as a substantial course project.

Course Calendar with Handouts

Note: Tentative, schedule subject to change!

Week Date Lecture Readings
5th Edition
Readings
6th Edition
Assignments
1 Wed Jan 17 L1: Introduction, Early Machines PPTX PDF Ch. 1, App. A Ch. 1, App. A
Fri Jan 19 CS152 No section
2 Mon Jan 22 L2: Simple Machine Implementations, Microcoding PPTX PDF
Mon Jan 22 CS252 No Readings Discussion
Wed Jan 24 L3: Pipelining PPTX PDF App. C.1-C.3 App. C.1-C.3 PS 1 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Jan 26 CS152 Section 1: Microcode, Introduction to RISC-V tools and Lab 1 Overview Lab 1
Microcode Handout
3 Mon Jan 29 L4: Pipelining II PPTX PDF App. C.4-C.6 App. C.4-C.6
Mon Jan 29 CS252 Readings Discussion "Design of the B5000 System", Lonergan, King, 1961
"Architecture of the IBM System/360", Amdahl, Blaauw, Brooks, 1964
Wed Jan 31 L5: Memory Hierarchy PPTX PDF App. B.1-B.2, Ch. 2.1-2.3 App. B.1-B.2, Ch. 2.1-2.2  
Fri Feb 2 CS152 Section 2: Pipelining review      
4 Mon Feb 5 L6: Memory Hierarchy II PPTX PDF App. B.3 App. B.3 PS 1 due at start of class
Mon Feb 5 CS252 Readings Discussion "The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer", Patterson, Ditzel, 1980
Comments on the "The Case for the RISC", Clark, Strecker, 1980
"Performance from architecture: comparing a RISC and CISC with similar hardware organization", Bhandarkar, Clark, 1991
Wed Feb 7 L7: Memory Hierarchy III PPTX PDF PS 2 (PDF, DOC)
Handout 2
Fri Feb 9 CS152 Section 3: PS 1 Review     PS 1 solutions
5 Mon Feb 12 L8: Address Translation and Protection PPTX PDF App. B.4-7 App. B.4-7 Lab 1 due
Mon Feb 12 CS252 Readings Discussion "IBM's Single-Processor Supercomputer Efforts", Smotherman, Spicer, CACM, 53(1), 2010
"Implementation of Precise Interrupts in Pipelined Processors", Smith, Pleszkun, ISCA, 1985 (IEEE Trans. Computer Journal version)
"Parallel Operation in the Control Data 6600", Thornton, Proceedings of the Fall Joint Computers Conference, vol 26, pp. 33-40, 1964
Wed Feb 14 L9: Virtual Memory PPTX PDF    
Fri Feb 16 CS152 Section 4: Lab 2 Overview     Lab 2 (Version 1.0.1)
6 Mon Feb 19 President's Day Holiday
Wed Feb 21 L10: Complex pipelines, out-of-order issue, register renaming PPTX PDF Ch. 3.1,3.4-3.5 Ch. 3.1,3.4-3.6 PS 2 due
Fri Feb 23 CS152 Section 5: Memory hierarchy and PS 2 review     PS 2 solutions
7 Mon Feb 26 Midterm 1: (L1-L9) Solutions    
Mon Feb 26 CS252 No Readings Discussion
Wed Feb 28 L11: Out-of-order execution PPTX PDF Ch. 3.6, 3.8 Ch. 3.6, 3.8 PS 3 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Mar 2 CS152 Section 6: Lab 3 Overview Lab 3
8 Mon Mar 5 L12: Branch Prediction and Advanced Out-of-Order Superscalars PPTX PDF Ch. 3.3,3.9-3.10 Lab 2 due
Mon Mar 5 CS252 Project Proposal Discussion Project proposals due.
Wed Mar 7 L13: Advanced Superscalars and VLIW PPTX PDF Ch. 3.2,3.7 Ch. 3.2,3.7
Fri Mar 9 CS152 Section 7: Out-of-order Execution
9 Mon Mar 12 L14: Multithreading PPTX PDF Ch. 3.12 Ch. 3.11 PS 3 due
Mon Mar 12 CS252 Readings Discussion "An Efficient Algorithm for Exploiting Multiple Arithmetic units", Tomasulo, IBM Journal, January 1967
"Decoupled Access/Execute Computer Architectures", Smith, ISCA 1982 (ACM TOCS version)
"The MIPS R10000 Superscalar microprocessor", Yeager, IEEE Micro 16(2), 1996
Wed Mar 14 L15: Vectors PPTX PDF Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G) PS 4 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Mar 16 CS152 Section 8: PS 3 review PS 3 Solutions
10 Mon Mar 19 L16: Vectors II PPTX PDF Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G) Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G) Lab 3 due
Mon Mar 12 CS252 Readings Discussion "Combining Branch Predictors", McFarling, DEC WRL Technical Note TN-36, 1993
"Dynamic Branch Prediction with Perceptrons", Jimenez, Lin, HPCA 2001
" A case for (partially) TAgged GEometric history length branch prediction , Seznec, Michaud, Journal of Instruction Level Parallelism (JILP), 2006
Wed Mar 21 L17: GPUs PPTX PDF Ch. 4.4-4.9 Ch. 4.4-4.9
Fri Mar 23 CS152 Section 9: Lab 4 Overview PS 4 due
Lab 4 (Version 1.0.2)
11 Mar 26-30 Spring Break      
12 Mon Apr 2 L18: Cache Coherence PPTX PDF Ch. 5.1-5.4 Ch. 5.1-5.4
Mon Apr 2 CS252 Readings Discussion "The CRAY-1 Computer System", Russel, CACM 1978
"Very Long Instruction Word Architectures and the ELI-512", Fisher, ISCA 1983
"A VLIW Architecture for a Trace Scheduling Compiler", Colwell et al., IEEE Trans. Computers, 1988
Wed Apr 4 L19: Synchronization and Memory Consistency Models PPTX PDF Ch. 5.1, 5.5-5.6 Ch. 5.1, 5.5-5.6
Fri Apr 6 CS152 Section 10: PS 4 review PS 4 Solutions
13 Mon Apr 9 L20: Synchronization Primitives PPTX PDF Ch. 5.2-5.3 Ch. 5.2-5.3 Lab 4 due
Mon Apr 9 CS252 Project Checkpoint Project update
Wed Apr 11 Midterm 2: L10-L17 (Solutions) Ch. 5.4 PS 5 (PDF, DOC)
Handout 6
Handout 7
Fri Apr 13 CS152 Section 11: Lab 5 Overview     Lab 5
14 Mon Apr 16 L21: I/O and Warehouse-Scale Computing PPTX PDF Ch. 6 Ch. 6
Mon Apr 16 CS252 Readings Discussion "The Tera Computer System", Alverson et al, ICS 1990
"Shared Memory Consistency Models: A Tutorial", Adve, Gharachorloo, DEC WRL TR, 1995
"The SGI Origin: a ccNUMA highly scalable server", Laudon, Lenoski, ISCA 1997
Wed Apr 18 L22: Virtual Machines (Guest Lecturer: Dr. Lisa Wu) PDF
Fri Apr 20 CS152 Section 12: Multiprocessor Review
15 Mon Apr 23 L23: Domain-Specific Architectures, Course Wrap PPTX PDF Ch. 7 PS 5 due
Mon Apr 23 CS252 Project Checkpoint Project update
Wed Apr 25 Class Review Session PPTX PDF PS 5 Solutions
Fri Apr 27 CS152 Section 13: Final Review Lab 5 due
16 Mon Apr 30 No lecture - RRR Week
Wed May 2 No lecture - RRR Week
Wed May 2 CS 252 Final Project Presentations (TBD)
Friday May 4 No section - RRR Week
17 Tue May 8 CS 152 Final Exam, 11:30AM-2:30PM, 306 Soda Solutions
Fri May 11 CS 252 Final Project Papers due