Course Information for CS252A: Graduate Computer Architecture

Spring 2022

Catalog Description: Graduate Computer Architecture

4.0 units. Three hours of lecture plus one hour paper discussion per week. Prerequisites: CS152 or equivalent.

Class Schedule/Rooms

Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30AM-11:00AM, via Zoom through January 27 then in person in 306 Soda (date subject to change).
Both midterms held in class during lecture times.

Instructor: John Wawrzynek, Professor, EECS Department
Email: johnw at eecs
Office Hours: Thursday 11:00AM-12:00, via Zoom through January 27 then in 631 Soda (email for Zoom link)

TA: Hasan Genc
Email: hngenc at berkeley
Office Hours: Wednesday 4:00PM-5:00PM

TA: Josh Kang
Email: minwoo_kang at berkeley
Office Hours: Tuesday 4:30PM-5:30PM

Course Grading

20% Paper readings

Paper summaries are posted as private notes on the Piazza thread for each paper. Each summary should include one paragraph summarizing main content of paper including good/bad points, plus 1-3 questions to contribute to online paper discussion. We will not count the two lowest weeks' grades, which includes absence, but please send in summaries even if you cannot attend class.

30% Exams

There will be 2 midterms (15% for each) covering the class material. These will be closed book with no calculators, phones, smart watches, or computers allowed.

50% Class Project

Substantial research project by pairs of students, with 10-page conference-style paper and class presentation.

Regrade Policy

Requests for regrades on midterms, problem sets, and labs must be submitted through gradescope within one week of grades being posted.

Academic Accommodation Policy

Students with disabilities who need accommodations in order to access this course will be accommodated. Please contact DSP and apply for services. If you have emergency medical information you wish to share, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please inform us as soon as possible. Please see Krste privately after class or in his office.

Webcast

Video recordings of the lectures will be made available (requires CalNet/bConnected log-in), with the links posted on Piazza.

Piazza

The course will use Piazza for class communication. The course page can be found at piazza.com/berkeley/spring2022/cs152252a.

Compute Resources

All labs will be available on eda-{1..8}.eecs.berkeley.edu (eda-1.eecs, eda-2.eecs, etc.). You may want to use other servers for writing code or compiling, and you can see a full list of them at inst.

Textbooks

The following textbook is highly recommended for the course:

TextBook Picture J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 6th Edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., Menlo Park, CA. December 2017.
ISBN13: 978-0128119051
ISBN10: 0128119055

We will also use material from the companion website: 6th Edition, 5th Edition

The following textbook is recommended to refresh your background and to provide a simpler introduction to some of the basic concepts. Any recent edition should be sufficient for background study.

D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy, Computer Organization and Design RISC-V Edition: The Hardware Software Interface, 1st Edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishing Co., Menlo Park, CA., April 2017. 
ISBN13: 978-0128122754
ISBN10: 0128122757