This CS294 seminar will focus on the problem of declarative design and design-space exploration for computer architectures. Modern hardware designs are increasingly complex systems with many specialized processing engines. The complexity of these systems and the severe physical constraints imposed by technology scaling are limiting the hardware efficiency gains possible using traditional manual design. Automated exploration of much larger design spaces is required to uncover further efficiency gains, but will require a much higher level of design description to avoid restricting the set of possible design solutions while maintaining architect productivity.
This class will consist of lectures and projects in three related areas of high-level architecture design. First, we will refine and extend earlier work in hardware pattern languages to provide a structure around which to base future high-level hardware design tools. Second, we will develop implementations of patterns as flexible parameterized design generators using the Chisel hardware construction language. Third, we will examine automatic design-space optimization methods and simulation techniques that effectively explore large design spaces while maximizing objective functions such as Tasks/Joule and Performance/Area.
Week | Date | Instr | Lecture | Assignments |
1 | Tue Jan 22 | JB | Lecture 1: Overview and Potential Projects pdf | |
Thu Jan 24 | JB | Lecture 2: Chisel Review pdf | Rethinking Digital Design: Why Design Must Change | |
2 | Tue Jan 29 | JB | Lecture 3: Generators and Parameterization pdf | Chisel Tutorial |
Thu Jan 31 | KA | Lecture 4: Patterns I pdf | Using a Configurable Processor Generator for Computer Architecture Prototyping | |
3 | Tue Feb 5 | KA | Lecture 5: Patterns II pdf | Design Patterns for Reconfigurable Computing |
Thu Feb 7 | JB | Lecture 6: Advanced Chisel pdf | Verification Driven Formal Architecture and Microarchitecture Modeling | |
4 | Tue Feb 12 | JB | Lecture 7: Embedded Domain Specific Languages pdf | 802.11a Transmitter: A Case Study in Microarchitectural Exploration |
Thu Feb 14 | JH | Lecture 8: Spiral by James Hoe pdf | Computer Generation of Hardware for Linear Digital Signal Processing Transforms | |
5 | Tue Feb 19 | Lecture 9: discussion | Accurate and Efficient Regression Modeling for Microarchitectural Performance and Power Prediction | |
Thu Feb 21 | JS | Lecture 10: Hardware / Software Codesign by John Shalf pdf | Energy-Efficient Computing For Extreme-Scale Science | |
6 | Tue Feb 26 | JB | Lecture 11: Design Space Exploration pdf | Decoupling Algorithms from Schedules for Easy Optimization of Image Processing Pipelines |
Thu Feb 28 | JB | Lecture 12: Optimization by Ali Rahimi pdf | SPIRAL: Code Generation for DSP Transforms | |
7 | Tue Mar 5 | KA | Lecture 13: Relevant Advanced Software Engineering Approaches by Martin Maas pdf | Project Proposal due (before class) |
Thu Mar 7 | All | Initial project proposal presentations. | ||
8 | Tue Mar 12 | No class | ||
Thu Mar 14 | All | Private project meetings with groups. | ||
9 | Tue Mar 19 | All | No class. | |
Thu Mar 21 | All | Public project progress presentations. | ||
10 | Tue Mar 26 | All | Spring Recess | |
Thu Mar 28 | All | Spring Recess | ||
11 | Tue Apr 2 | No class. | ||
Thu Apr 4 | All | Private project meetings with groups. | ||
12 | Tue Apr 9 | No class. | ||
Thu Apr 11 | All | Public project progress presentations. | ||
13 | Tue Apr 16 | Private project meetings with groups. | ||
Thu Apr 18 | All | No Class | ||
14 | Tue Apr 23 | Josep Torrellas | Guest Lecture III | |
Thu Apr 25 | Public project progress presentations. | |||
15 | Tue Apr 30 | No class. | ||
Thu May 2 | All | Private project meetings with groups. | ||
Tue May 7 | All | Final Project Presentations : 320 Soda | ||
Thu May 9 | All | Final Project Presentations : 320 Soda | ||
Wed May 15 | All | Final Project Reports Due at 11:59PM | (NO EXTENSIONS) |