CPSC 418: Reading List

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Note:

Throughout this list, ``HJ&S'' refers to the textbook for this course: ``Reading in Computer Architecture'', edited by Hill, Jouppi, and Sohi.

Warning: Subject to change with notice!

This list is my current snapshot of the course reading list. I will certainly make changes as the semester progresses. I will try very hard to give at least two weeks notice on any changes. Whenever the reading list is changed, I will up-date this page (you may have to force a reload in your browser), and I will post a notice to the course newsgroup.

Architecture Overview

Jan.  4:        Course Overview
                Sample design problem: video-on-demand

Jan.  6:        Architecture review:
                  Instruction execution
                  Memory Hierarchy
                  I/O

Jan. 11:        "Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits",
                Moore, HJ&S pp. 56-59
            and "How real is the $10 billion fab?",
                in Semiconductor Business News, July 1999.

Disks and Disk Arrays

Jan. 13:        "An Introduction to Disk Drive Modeling",
                Ruemmler & Wilkes.
		In HJ&S pp. 462-473

Jan. 18:        "Blueprint for a Hard Real-Time File System",
                Cheng, Gillies, and Greenstreet,
                UBC CICSR tech. report CICSR-95-05, Sept. 1995.

Jan. 20:        "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks",
                Patterson, Gibson, & Katz.
		In HJ&S pp. 474-481

Jan. 25:        "Active Storage for Large Scale Data Mining and Multimedia",
                Riedel, Gibson, Faloutsos.
		In Proc. 24th Int'l. Conf.  on Very Large Databases (VLDB98).
            and "Challenges for Tertiary Storage in Multimedia Servers",
                Chervenak.
		 In Parallel Computing Journal, 1998.

Copper and Glass

Jan. 27:        "High-Speed Electrical Signalling: Overview and Limitations",
                Horowitz, Yang, & Sideropoulos.
		In IEEE Micro, February 1998, pp 12-24.
            and introduction to chapter 7 in HJ&S pp. 443-449.

Feb.  1:        "Lightwave Communications:  The Fifth Generation",
                Desurvire.  In Scientific American, January 1992, pp. 114-121.

Networks

Feb.  3:        "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks",
		Metcalfe & Boggs.  In HJ&S pp. 482-491.

Feb.  8:        "Fast Switched Backplane for a Gigabit Switched Router",
		McKeown.
		

Feb. 10:        Midterm: The HP AutoRAID hierarchical storage system",
		Wilkes, Golding, Staelin, Sullivan, Proc. 15th ACM SOSP, 1995.
		postscript compressed postscript pdf

Memory

Feb. 22:        Memory review: SRAM & DRAM

Feb. 24:        Memory hierarchy review: caches
                  Read: Introduction to chapter 6 in HJ&Spp. 363-369

Feb. 29:        "Shared-Memory Multiprocessors", section 9.3, HJ&S pp. 554-556"
	    and "Using Cache Memory to Reduce Processor-Memory Traffic",
		Goodman, in HJ&Spp. 387-394
	    and "Firefly: a Multiprocessor Workstation",
                Thacker & Stewart, in Proc. of ASPLOS-87, pp. 164-172.

Mar.  2:        "A New Solution to Coherence Problems in Multicache Systems",
		Censier & Feautrier, in HJ&S pp. 576-582
	    and "The Stanford Dash Multiprocessor",
		Lenoski, Laudon, Gharachorloo, Weber, Gupta, Hennessy, Horowitz, & Lam,
		in HJ&S, pp. 583-599.

Mar.  7:        "Multicast Snooping: A New Coherence Method Using a Multicast Address Network",
		Biler, Dickson, Hu, Plakal, Sorin, Hill, & Wood, in Proc. ISCA'99, pp. 294-304.

Mar.  9:        Talk by Mark Hill, University of Wisconsin.
		Slides

Instruction Level Parallelism

Mar. 14:        "Machine Organization of the IBM RISC System/6000 Processor",
		Grohoski, in HJ&S, pp. 252-274.
	    and "Exploiting Instruction Level Parallelism in Processors by Caching Scheduled Groups",
		Nair & Hopkins, in Proc. ISCA'97, pp. 13-25.
	        Note: for a description of RS/6000 (and PowerPC) assembly language,
		click here.  Check out chapter 8 and appendix B.

Mar. 16:        Talk by Ravi Nair, IBM Thomas J. Watson.

Mar. 21:        "Implementing Precise Exceptions in Pipelined Processors",
		Smith & Pleszkun, in HJ&S, pp. 202-213.
	    and "The MIPS R10000 Superscalar Microprocessor", Yeager, in HJ&S pp. 275-287.
		(Al Davis's slides on this paper.)

Mar. 23:        Talk by Neil Wilhelm, SUN Microsystems Laboratories.

Mar. 28:	"Superspeculative microarchitecture for beyond A.D. 2000",
		Lipasti & Shen in IEEE Computer, Sept. 1997.

Mar. 30:	"Pipeline Gating: Speculation Control for Energy Reduction",
                Manne, Klauser, & Grunwald, in Proc. ISCA'98, pp. 132-141.


Apr.  4:	"The Future of Microprocessors", Yu, in HJ&S pp. 681-688.

Apr.  6:	TBA