Detailed course info.
Class project suggestions.


Course Calendar with Handouts
Subject to Change.

Week Date Lecture Assignments
1 Thu Aug 28 Lecture 1: The Fab-Design Interface. Industry economics and organization. Manufacturing, from silica mine to packaged chip. Dennard scaling and Moore's Law. Chip design styles: structured custom, standard cells, logic synthesis, systems on a chip, programmable standard parts. Class project and schedule. Lecture slides. Intel Iphone Article Chisel Tutorial
Part 1
2 Tue Sep 2 Lecture 2: ParLab + Aspire + RISC-V + Rocket + Accelerators. Overview of ParLab and Aspire projects. ASPIRE solution of ensemble of parallel pattern-specific accelerators. Overview of RISC-V ISA. Introduction to Rocket single-issue in-order pipeline implementation of RISC-V. Overview of ROCC coprocessor interface. Lecture slides. Chisel Part A Due Lab 1 out
Thu Sep 4 Lecture 3: Timing. The GALS methodology. Combinational and clocked logic timing tutorial. Timing characterization of a new process. Pipelining, C-Slow retiming, and CLOS networks. Circuit details of flip-flops and inverters. Lecture slides.
3 Tue Sep 9 Lecture 4: Power and Energy. Overview of power issues in different product categoies. Transistor physics and the power wall. Design techniques: parallelism, power-down modes, multiple Vdds, clock gating, data-dependent processing, thermal management.
Wed Sep 10 Lab 1 Due
Thu Sep 11 Lecture 5: Memory and memory design patterns. Lab 2 out
4 Tue Sep 16 Lecture 6: Design verification strategies and Chisel based testing. Lecture slides.
Thu Sep 18 Lecture 7: Accelerator Projects. Power and energy techniques available for the project. Pareto optimality. The accelerator interface. Three worked project examples, and pointers to six other project ideas. Lecture slides.
Fri Sep 19 Discussion slides
5 Tue Sep 23 Lecture 8: Overview of hardware design patterns. Lecture slides
Wed Sep 24
Thu Sep 25 Lecture 10: Design patterns for processing units and communication links. Ready-valid interfaces. An overview of Lab 3. Lecture slides
6 Tue Sep 30 Guest Lecture Lab 3 Out
Wed Oct 1 Parameter Documentation here
Thu Oct 2 Advanced Chisel Slides Lab 3 Due
7 Tue Oct 7 Oral Project Proposals Project
Proposals Due
Lab 4 Out
Wed Oct 8
Thu Oct 9 Oral Project Proposals
8 Tue Oct 14 Lab 4 Due
Thu Oct 16 Private project meetings with groups.
9 Thu Oct 23 Private project meetings with groups.
10 Thu Oct 30 Public project progress presentations.
11 Thu Nov 6 Private project meetings with groups.
12 Thu Nov 13 Private project meetings with groups.
13 Tue Nov 18 Lab 4 Out
Thu Nov 20 Public project progress presentations.
14 Tue Nov 25 Private project meetings with groups.
Thu Nov 27 Thanksgiving -- No meetings
15 Thu Dec 4 Private project meetings with groups.
16 Thu Dec 11 Private project meetings with groups.
17 Mon Dec 15 Final Presentations from 12-3PM in 310 Soda.
Thurs Dec 18 Final Project Reports due at 11:59PM (NO EXTENSIONS) .