ECE6100 -  Advanced Computer Architecture  (3-0-3)

Prerequisites:  ECE 3055

Corequisites:  None

Catalog Description:  Comprehensive coverage of the architecture and system issues that confront the design of a high performance workstation/PC computer architectures with emphasis on quantitaive evaluation. Credit is not allowed for both ECE 6100 and any of the following courses: ECE 4100, CS 4290, CS 6290.

Textbook(s):  Hennessey & Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (4th edition), Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. (required)

Topical Outline:  Pipelines review basic principles, hazards, dependencies Data hazards, scoreboards, Tomasulo algorithm control hazards, branch prediction techniques multiple instruction issue compiler support speculative execution performance evaluation Memory systems review of caches principles techniques to reduce cache misses, multi-level caches techniques to reduce hit time techniques to improve main memory performance virtual memory Storage Systems (6) review of storage technologies, magnetic disk basics I/O performance measures, benchmarks reliability, availability, RAID interaction with caches, OS Parallel Computers taxonomy of parallel architectures, parallel applications synchronization mechanisms bus based cache coherence protocols directory based cache coherence protocols memory consistency models, relaxed consistency models interconnection networks, bi-section bandwidth, topologies networked workstation cluster computers