Final Report Guidelines

Rubric

A short final report is due by midnight on Friday 5/13. The report should be around 8 pages total (no more than 12), perhaps around 5 pages of text and 3 pages of figures (plus or minus a few pages on each). Better reports mix the text and figures together.

The report should be a standalone document. Meaning, someone who has not seen any of your presentations should be able to read and understand it.

If you used any resources to understand your project, please cite them. A good place for these citations is in the background section at the beginning of the paper but they may be placed in other sections as well. Also, if you based any part of your implementation off of an existing design, please cite the document you used. It is understood that your design may have been influenced by previous work. Don't avoid citing out of fear that your design is "not original enough".

Your paper should follow the IEEE template for Conference Proceedings with US Letter paper size. Latex and Word templates are available for free at http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html. You do not need to follow the IEEE specific guidelines outlined in the template document (ex. abbreviation standards, preferred units ...). We are requesting you use the template for its double column format, set fonts, and set margins.

Here is a suggested outline and page breakdown for your report. The flow will roughly follow the outline of your final presentation, but should include more details. You do not need to strictly follow this outline, it is here just to give you an idea of what we will be looking for. Also, feel free to add additional information not explicitly mentioned in the outline below, if you think it will help explain your work.

  1. Project Objectives.
    Describe the purpose of your design, and what you expected to accomplish with your project. Briefly provide any background that someone would need to understand what you were attempting to accomplish and the importance of your project. (≈ 0.5 page)

  2. The Design.
    If appropriate describe the algorithm(s) chosen. Describe the high-level structure of the design, ideally using a block diagram. Describe any particular design and/or implementation challenges you had to overcome, and how you addressed the challenges. (≈ 2 page)

  3. Design Methodology and Space Exploration.
    Describe the steps you took to develop and verify the function of your design and your Chisel implementation. Describe your design space parameters, and your approach to exploring the space. What are your design metrics? (≈ 1.5 page)

  4. Results of the Exploration.
    Think about how to best present the data you collected that clearly supports your findings and conclusions. Tables and graphs are useful here. Tables are good for completeness (can show lots of numbers); graphs are better for presenting an intuitive understanding. (≈ 2.5 page)

  5. Summary of Results.
    Summarize your findings and any conclusions you can draw about the results. (≈ 0.5 page)

  6. Retrospective.
    What have you learned from this experience? How would you do it different next time? Please include any comments on how we might improve the course next time. Also, please include any comments that we might pass on to the Chisel development team. (≈ 1 page)

  7. References.
    Include citations to any document you used. Use inline citations throughout the document with the bibliographic information at the end.

Part of your final grade will be based on a report grade. For the report grade, we will consider clarity, organization, and grammar. Make sure to proofread and correct mistakes before turning it in.

Please turn-in your report as a PDF file - no other formats please. (No MS-word documents!).