CMPE 221 - Advanced Microprocessor Design - Spring 2005

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General Class Information

  • Lecture times: Monday and Wednesday, 5:00-6:45pm
  • Class: JBE 156
  • Instructor: Jose Renau
    Office Hours: Friday, 4:00-6:00 PM
    Office: E2 227
  • Text book: None. See reading list
  • Mailing list: SCOORE Mailing list

Grading

  • Paper Reviews: 40%
  • Project: 60%

Policy

  • No exams, midterms, or homeworks. Grading is based on paper reviews and project.

Class Description

CMPE221 is an introduction to the latest advances in computer architecture. Focuses on processor core design. Topics include simultaneous multithreading, thread level speculation, trace caches, novel out-of-order mechanisms, and energy-efficient processor core designs.

Final project requires the modification/enhancement of an out-of-order processor on an FPGA development system. The class project will resemble real industry projects. Students will work/collaborate on the same cvs source project. Each group will be in charge of different processor parts.

Examples of projects: Enhancing the branch predictor, support load-speculation, memory stride prefetchers, support interrupts...

Requirements: To take this class you are required to be knowledgeable of on computer architecture (cmpe202 or equivalent), and to have some experience with Verilog and/or VHDL (cmpe125 or equivalent). Concurrent enrollment in the Lab class is required. Email instructor if you can not access the lab (Cupertino). No textbook is required.

CMPE221/L (3 credit) consists of weekly two-hour lab session, and 10-15 hours of independent work.

This course consists of two major blocks: Theory and lab. For the lab we use modelSim, quartus II, and Symplicity Pro. We also have several FPGA altera boards with one of the most modern FPGA chips available (Stratix II).