Welcome to the Spring 2019 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 hosted in the Amazon cloud (FireSim). 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 23 L1: Introduction, Early Machines PPTX PDF Ch. 1, App. A Ch. 1, App. A
Fri Jan 25 CS152 No section
2 Mon Jan 28 L2: Simple Machine Implementations, Microcoding PPTX PDF
Mon Jan 28 CS252 No Readings Discussion
Wed Jan 30 L3: Pipelining PPTX PDF App. C.1-C.3 App. C.1-C.3 PS 1 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Feb 1 CS152 Section 1: Microcode, Introduction to RISC-V tools and Lab 1 Overview Lab 1
Microcode Handout
3 Mon Feb 4 L4: Pipelining II PPTX PDF App. C.4-C.6 App. C.4-C.6
Mon Feb 4 CS252 Readings Discussion "Design of the B5000 System", Lonergan, King, 1961
"Architecture of the IBM System/360", Amdahl, Blaauw, Brooks, 1964
Wed Feb 6 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 8 CS152 Section 2: Pipelining review      
4 Mon Feb 11 L6: Memory Hierarchy II PPTX PDF App. B.3 App. B.3 PS 1 due at start of class
Mon Feb 11 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 13 L7: Memory Hierarchy III PPTX PDF PS 2 (PDF, DOC)
Handout 2
Fri Feb 15 CS152 Section 3: PS 1 Review     PS 1 solutions
5 Mon Feb 18 President's Day Holiday
Wed Feb 20 L8: Address Translation and Protection PPTX PDF App. B.4-7 App. B.4-7 Lab 1 due
Fri Feb 22 CS152 Section 4: Lab 2 Overview     Lab 2
6 Mon Feb 25 L9: Virtual Memory PPTX PDF    
Mon Feb 25 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 27 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.
CS252 project proposals due.
Fri Mar 1 CS152 Section 5: Memory hierarchy and PS 2 review     PS 2 solutions
7 Mon Mar 4 Midterm 1: (L1-L9) Solutions    
Mon Mar 4 CS252 No Readings Discussion
Wed Mar 6 L11: Out-of-order execution PPTX PDF Ch. 3.6, 3.8 Ch. 3.6, 3.8 PS 3 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Mar 8 CS152 Section 6: Lab 3 Overview, Parameterizing OoO Cores PDF
8 Mon Mar 11 L12: Branch Prediction and Advanced Out-of-Order Superscalars PPTX PDF Ch. 3.3,3.9-3.10 Lab 2 due (Extended to 3/15)
Mon Mar 11 CS252 Project Proposal Discussion
Wed Mar 13 L13: VLIW PPTX PDF Ch. 3.2,3.7 Ch. 3.2,3.7 Lab 3
Fri Mar 15 CS152 Section 7: Out-of-order Execution Lab 2 due (Extension)
9 Mon Mar 18 L14: Multithreading (Guest Lecturer: David Biancolin) PPTX PDF Ch. 3.12 Ch. 3.11 PS 3 due
Mon Mar 18 CS252 Readings Discussion (Meeting Postponed, but summaries still due) "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 20 L15: Vectors PPTX PDF Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G) PS 4 (PDF, DOC)
Fri Mar 22 CS152 Section 8: PS 3 review PS 3 Solutions
10 Mar 25-29 Spring Break      
11 Mon Apr 1 L16: GPUs PPTX PDF Ch. 4.4-4.9 Ch. 4.4-4.9
Mon Apr 1 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 Apr 3 L17: Vectors II PPTX PDF

Last year's slides: PPTX PDF
*Older vector spec description for Lab 4 only*
Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G) Ch. 4.1-4.3 (App. G)
Fri Apr 5 CS152 Section 9: Lab 4 Overview PS 4 due
Lab 4
RVV 0.4 Spec: Ch 18
12 Mon Apr 8
Class cancelled
Lab 3 due
Mon Apr 8 Section cancelled 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 10 L18: Cache Coherence PPTX PDF Ch. 5.1-5.4 Ch. 5.1-5.4
Fri Apr 12 CS152 Section 10: Midterm 2 Review Solutions PS 4 Solutions
13 Mon Apr 15 L19: Synchronization and Memory Consistency Models PPTX PDF Ch. 5.1, 5.5-5.6 Ch. 5.1, 5.5-5.6
Mon Apr 15 CS252 Project Checkpoint Project update
Wed Apr 17 Midterm 2: L10-17 Solutions Ch. 5.4 PS 5 (PDF, DOC)
Handout 6
Handout 7
Fri Apr 19 CS152 Section 11: Lab 5 Overview   Lab 5
14 Mon Apr 22 L20: Domain-Specific Architectures and the Google TPU, (Guest lecturer: Prof. David Patterson) PPTX PDF Ch. 6 Ch. 6 Lab 4 due
Mon Apr 22 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 24 L21: Virtual Machines (Guest Lecturer: Dr. Lisa Wu) PDF Ch. 5.2-5.3 Ch. 5.2-5.3
Fri Apr 26 CS152 Section 12: Multiprocessor Review
15 Mon Apr 29 L22: Synchronization Primitives PPTX PDF PS 5 due Extended to 5/1
Mon Apr 29 CS252 Project Checkpoint Project update
Wed May 1 L23: I/O and Warehouse-Scale Computing PPTX PDF Ch. 7 PS 5 due
Fri May 3 CS152 Section 13: Final Review Part 1
Solutions
Lab 5 due
PS 5 Solutions
16 Mon May 6 No lecture - RRR Week
Wed May 8 No lecture - RRR Week
Wed May 8 CS 252 Final Project Presentations (511 Soda, 2:30pm-5:00pm)
Friday May 10 No section - RRR Week
17 Tue May 14 CS 152 Final Exam, 8:00-11:00am, 306 Soda (Solutions)
Fri May 17 CS 252 Final Project Papers due