COMP740 Spring 2008 News

No Class on Monday

Anselmo Lastra — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:59:00 +0000

See you Wednesday for a wrap-up lecture. I'll also hand out the take-home final.

Project Description Posted

Anselmo Lastra — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:12:00 +0000

I uploaded the project description to Blackboard, in the assignments area. Due Wednesday, April 23 at the beginning of class. Let me know soon if you have problems compiling or running SimpleScalar.

No Class on 3/5 and 3/17

Anselmo Lastra — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:48:00 +0000

See you on the 19th. Enjoy break.

Questions on HW2

Anselmo Lastra — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:45:00 +0000

This one was hard to grade (and interpret) because of the different assumptions people made. On a few of your homework 2 papers, I asked you some questions. I've numbered them in purple.

If you have a grade at the top, then I had no questions. Thanks.

Next Week's Classes

Anselmo Lastra — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Professor Singh will be taking my place next Monday, 2/25, to talk about Superscalar processors.

No class next Wednesday.

See you on Monday, March 3.

Homework 3

Anselmo Lastra — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:57:00 +0000

I posted homework 3 to Blackboard. It's due Monday, March 3.

Homework 2

Anselmo Lastra — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:46:00 +0000

I've posted Homework 2 (an exercise in scoreboarding) to Blackboard. It's due Monday, 2/18.

Homework 1

Anselmo Lastra — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:24:00 +0000

I uploaded Homework 1 to Blackboard, under the assignments category. It has problems from Chapter 1 and Appendix B.

Instruction Set Architectures (ISA)

Anselmo Lastra — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:09:00 +0000

For next time, please read Appendix B, concentrating on Sections 2 - 6.

If you don't have much exposure to this topic, I recommend skimming Appendix J.2 (on the CD) to get a feel for the wide variety of ISAs. There's also some interesting historical info (for example, Figure J.35 shows the lineage of RISC processors).

Finally, if you are interested in history, I'd recommend Appendix K. Section 2 is a history of the very earliest machines, while Section 3 is about the development of ISAs.

Move to SN155

Anselmo Lastra — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:45:00 +0000

Sorry about the crowding today. Let's meet in SN155 beginning next class (which is next Wednesday).

Why are Wafers Round?

Anselmo Lastra — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:15:00 +0000

John Thomas found this good explanation of the process for manufacturing Silicon wafers.

http://www.processpecialties.com/siliconp.htm

A picture of the cylindrical boule is at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Monokristalines_Silizium_f%C3%BCr_die_Waferherstellung.jpg

Read Ch. 1 and Moore's Paper

Anselmo Lastra — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:18:00 +0000

Please read Ch. 1 of the textbook, and the paper by Gordon Moore that was the first exposition of what has become known as Moore's Law. See

http://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf

Classroom Change to SN006

Anselmo Lastra — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:16:00 +0000

We're moving, starting immediately (Monday, 1/14 class) to SN006 in order to let an undergrad class expand.

There is Class Next Monday

Anselmo Lastra — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:55:00 +0000

Sorry, I'd made a mistake. The MLK holiday is on the 21st (the
following Monday).

COMP740 News

Anselmo Lastra — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:05:00 +0000

I'll be posting items (assignments, reading, etc) as a blog so that you can subscribe to the feed. Hopefully this is more convenient than reading the class web page.