Advanced Computer Architecture

AY2014/2015 Semester 1

Processor System Design: CPU interfaces, clock, control, data & address bus; System firmware. The CPU Architecture: including ISA, compiler relationship, control, pipelining, hazards, CISC/RISC/VLIW and issues of ILP. Memory Systems: cache, virtual memory systems and the MMU, access methods, reliability, error detection/correction. Performance Enhancements: superscalar; branching issues, multithreading, scalability, co-processors and enhancement units. Interfacing and Communications: I/O fundamentals, interrupts and interfacing, buses, protocols and arbitration. Computer Arithmetic: range, precision, real numbers, floating point and conversion, multi-precision arithmetic Multiprocessing: multiprocessing architectures and interconnections, shared memory and coherence, memory solutions Future directions: low power computing; testing, JTAG, system-on-chip and multi-core implementations, embedded systems issues, comparison of computational on CPU, DSP, FPGA and GPU.