Parallel Computer Architecture

This course will mainly introduce computer organization and design, including the following topics: i) instruction-level parallelism, including parallel processing, superscalar, VILW, static instruction scheduling dynamic scheduling and precise exception handling, ii) memory-level parallelism, iii) data-level parallelism including multi-core architecture, GPU, iv) thread-level parallelism and v) NVM-level parallelism. This course is a project-centric; we will have five gem5 lab projects. Most projects are a step-by-step tutorial to teach you how you can do simulation-based architectural explorations and studies. It will include CPU design analysis, exploring different branch predictors, multi-threading on full-system mode evaluations, and SSD internal parallelism analysis on gem5. Considering undergraduate students, this course will also include quick review lectures, which will include, instruction set architecture, MIPS/RISC architecture, pipelining, hazard and cache architecture.

Topics

Check OTL Reviews (EE312)

Operating Systems

The purpose of this course is to teach the general concepts and principles behind operating systems. The topic we will cover through this class, including i) kernel and process abstractions and programming, ii) scheduling and synchronization, iii) memory management and address translation, iv) caching and virtual memory v) file systems, storage devices, files and reliability, vi) full and para-virtualization. In addition to these lectures, we will also have term projects, which use an operating system simulator/emulator built for an educational purpose. In these projects, we expect that you not only can learn Linux practices but also make great strides in studies on operating systems design and implementation. This is in C/C++, rather than Java or Python. We believe that these projects will provide a more realistic experience in operating systems to students. In this class, all homeworks are treated in an individual assignment; whereas projects are considered as a group assignment. In typical, it is difficult to figure out the contributions that each member committed, the submission for these projects will be done through a git repository per group (e.g., bitbucket), and TA will check all push and pull transactions to grade a team. Note that, in this sense, Intermediate pushes will help TA see how students are progressing. The project teams may be two persons, some may be threes; the number of students per team will be decided based on information of the final registration, and will be announced in classes.

Topics

Textbook

Operating Systems Concepts, 9th Edition Silbershatz, Galvin, Gagne

Suggested references

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, Remzi and Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau.
Free, PDFs available online
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD OS
The Practice of Programming
The Mythical Man-Month

Projects

• Project-0: Install Pintos and implement print_name event [ description ]
• Project-1: Threads, timer and priority scheduler [ description is available at YSCEC ] [ DESIGNDOC sample ]
• Project-2: System call implementation [ DESIGNDOC sample ]
• Project-3: Virtual memory implementation [ DESIGNDOC sample ]

Check OTL Reviews (EE415)

Memory Architecture and Storage Systems

Modern flash-based solid state disk (SSDs) can be plagued by enormous performance variations depending on whether the underlying architectural complexities and flash management overheads can be hidden or not. Designing a smart flash controller and storage system is key hiding these architectural complexities and reducing the internal firmware overheads. In this course, we first understand the core components of SSD architecture and key concepts behind flash firmware. It then presents a set of novel storage optimizations including various concurrency methods, I/O scheduling algorithms, and garbage collection avoidance mechanisms.

The topic we will cover through this class as follows:

Lectures (in progress)

1. Logistics
2. Flash introduction -- NAND Flash Basics, Basics of floating gates and Reliability issues of NAND cells
3. Fundamental address mapping (FTL) -- Simple mapping algorithm and physical block management
4. Advanced address mapping (FTL) -- Associativity, garbage collection and wear leveling basics
5. Garbage collection basic -- Foreground and background garbage collection techniques
6. Flash-level controller [ pdf ] [ ppsx ] -- Flash memory transactions and advanced command control
7. SSD architecture and system-level controller [ pdf ] [ ppsx ] -- SSD Architecture and I/O parallelism-centric design techniques
8. Wear-leveling algorithms -- Reliability management functions and hot/cold data management
9. Internal buffer management -- DRAM caching, flash aware replacement and buffering mechanisms

The lectures will also have invitation talks that cover a series of industrial topics non-volatile memory express (NVMe) architecture, device management, and distributed flash controller. We will also provide a simulation framework for your project that can accelerate your knowledge on storage systems.

Advanced Programming Language

This course is mainly designed towards introducing the design and implementation of programming language. From the design perspective, we will study language features for expressing algorithms. On the other hand, we will also study the basic concepts of the tools to map such language features onto modern computing hardware (such as compilers, and interpreters). In this course, rather than harp on the feature of a particular language, we will focus on fundamental concepts, the differences among the programming languages, the reasons for those differences, and the implication of those differences offers language implementation. The topic we will cover through this class as follows:

• formal aspects of syntax and semantics
• naming, scoping, and binding
• scanning, parsing, semantic analysis, and code generation
• control flow, subroutines, exception handling, and concurrency
• type systems, composite types, data abstraction, and storage management
• imperative, functional, logic-based, and object-oriented programming paradigms

Prerequisites

It would be preferred to prepare the concepts of programming and have a practice on programming based on your language preference. We will assume that you either know the material that is supposed to be covered in the fundamental issues, or that you are willing to learn the material as necessary.

Textbooks

Programming language pragmatics/Scott, Michael Lee/Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

Suggested references

Structure and interpretation of computer programs/Abelson, Harold/MIT Press ; McGraw-Hill

Check OTL Reviews (EE209)

Computer Organization and Design

This course will mainly introduce computer organization and design, including the following topics:

• Instruction set design, illustrated by the MIPS instruction set architecture.
• Design of the datapath and control for a simple processor.
• CPU performance analysis and systems-level view of computer arithmetic.
• Parallelism, pipelining, hazard and dependency
• Cache and Memory design.
• Hierarchical memory.
• I/O subsystems, storage systems, I/O performance analysis.

Even though the class topics are related to architecture fundamentals, students are expect to have some hardware and computer science background. This course will include two or three simple projects, one of each leveraging a different style of simulation models build for an educational purpose. The one of the goal behind these projects is that students can learn i) how to use full system simulation software and ii) how to perform simulation-based architectural studies, which in turn can be a good steppingstone for your future research. The simulation framework built on both most 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of UNIX and Windows NT-based operating systems, but we recommend to modify them on a UNIX-like system. The projects will be relatively simple (compared to what an advanced computer architecture course usually deals with), but students should be capable of freely analyzing/modifying C/C++ written software models.

Prerequisites

We expect that you know C/C++ and data structures, have done some assembly language programming, and that you know about series and products, logarithms, advanced algebra, some calculus, and basic probability (means, standard deviations, etc.). We will assume that you either know the material that is supposed to be covered in those fundamental topics, or that you are willing to learn the material as necessary.

TEACHING HISTORY

• EE 312 Introduction to Computer Architecture (Spring'22)
• EE 817 Advanced Flash Storage and File Systems (Fall'21)
• EE 415, PD 511 Operating Systems and System Programming for Electrical Engineering (Spring'21)
• EE 209 Programming Structure (Fall'20)
• EE 488 Parallel Computer Architecture (Spring'20)
• EE 488 Parallel Computer Architecture (Fall'19)
• EE 817 Advanced Flash Storage and File Systems (Spring'19)
• IIT 6044 Advanced Operating Systems (Fall'18)
• IIT 3002 Operating Systems (Fall'18)
• IIT 1001 Advanced Programming (Spring'18)
• IIT 6047 Computer Architecture (Spring'18)
• IIT 8015 Memory Architecture and Storage Systems (Spring'17)
• IIT 1001 Advanced Programming (Spring'17)
• IIT 1014 Gateway to Integrated Technology (Spring'17)
• IIT 6036 Computer Organization and Design (Fall'16)
• IIT 3002 Operating Systems (Fall'16)
• IIT 7024 Advanced System Architecture (Spring'16)
• IIT 1001 Advanced Programming (Spring'16)
• IIT 6036 Computer Organization and Design (Fall'15)
• IIT 3002 Operating Systems (Fall'15)
• EE/CE 4304 Computer Architecture (Spring'15)
• EEDG 6302 Microprocessor Systems (Spring'15)
• EE/CE/CS 6304 Computer Architecture (Fall'14)
• EEDG 6302 Microprocessor Systems (Spring'14)
• EE/CE/CS 6304 Computer Architecture (Fall'13)