Computer Architecture
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There are 21 modules in this course
In this course, you will learn to design the computer architecture of complex modern microprocessors.
All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
This lecture will give you a broad overview of the course, as well as the description of architecture, micro-architecture and instruction set architectures.
What's included
8 videos2 readings
8 videos•Total 106 minutes
- Course Introduction•9 minutes
- Course Overview•5 minutes
- Motivation•17 minutes
- Course Content•9 minutes
- Architecture and Microarchitecture•24 minutes
- Machine Models•16 minutes
- ISA Characteristics•26 minutes
- Recap•1 minute
2 readings•Total 120 minutes
- Readings•120 minutes
- Problem Set 1 & 1A•0 minutes
This lecture covers the basic concept of pipeline and two different types of hazards.
What's included
4 videos1 reading
4 videos•Total 102 minutes
- Microcoded Microarchitecture•14 minutes
- Pipeline Basics•31 minutes
- Structural Hazard•10 minutes
- Data Hazards•47 minutes
1 reading•Total 90 minutes
- Readings•90 minutes
This lecture covers control hazards and the motivation for caches.
What's included
5 videos1 reading
5 videos•Total 93 minutes
- Control Hazards, Jumps•16 minutes
- Control Hazards, Branch•24 minutes
- Control Hazards, Others•8 minutes
- Memory Technologies•23 minutes
- Motivation for Caches•22 minutes
1 reading•Total 60 minutes
- Readings•60 minutes
This lecture covers cache characteristics and basic superscalar architecture.
What's included
5 videos1 reading
5 videos•Total 68 minutes
- Classifying Caches•28 minutes
- Cache Performance•17 minutes
- Superscalar 1•7 minutes
- Basic Two-way In-order Superscalar•5 minutes
- Fetch Logic and Alignment•11 minutes
1 reading•Total 90 minutes
- Readings•90 minutes
This lecture covers the common issues for superscalar architecture.
What's included
4 videos1 reading
4 videos•Total 77 minutes
- Baseline Superscalar and Alignment•4 minutes
- Interrupts and Bypassing•12 minutes
- Interrupts and Exceptions•29 minutes
- Introduction to Out-of-Order Processors•31 minutes
1 reading•Total 45 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
This lecture covers different kinds of architectures for out-of-order processors.
What's included
5 videos2 readings
5 videos•Total 73 minutes
- Review of Out-of-Order Processors•3 minutes
- I2O2 Processors•20 minutes
- I2O1 Processors•29 minutes
- IO3 Processors•16 minutes
- IO2I Processors•5 minutes
2 readings•Total 20 minutes
- Problem Set 2•10 minutes
- Problem Set 1 Solutions•10 minutes
This lecture covers the common methods used to improve the performance of out-of-order processors including register renaming and memory disambiguation.
What's included
5 videos
5 videos•Total 73 minutes
- Speculation and Branch•15 minutes
- Register Renaming Introduction•11 minutes
- Register Renaming with Pointers to IQ and ROB•25 minutes
- Register Renaming with Values in IQ and ROB•12 minutes
- Memory Disambiguation•10 minutes
This lecture covers the basic concept of very long instruction word (VLIW) processors.
What's included
5 videos3 readings
5 videos•Total 75 minutes
- Limits of Out-of-Order Design Complexity•13 minutes
- Introduction to VLIW•22 minutes
- VLIW Compiler Optimizations•21 minutes
- Classic VLIW Challenges•8 minutes
- Introduction to Predication•10 minutes
3 readings•Total 30 minutes
- Readings•10 minutes
- Problem Set 3•10 minutes
- Problem Set 2 Solutions•10 minutes
This lecture covers the common methods used to improve VLIW performance.
What's included
6 videos1 reading1 assignment
6 videos•Total 105 minutes
- Scheduling Model Review•6 minutes
- Review of Predication•31 minutes
- Predication Implementation•10 minutes
- Speculation Execution•26 minutes
- Dynamic Events and Clustered VLIWs•11 minutes
- Case Study: IA-64/Itanium•21 minutes
1 reading•Total 30 minutes
- Readings•30 minutes
1 assignment•Total 30 minutes
- Midterm•30 minutes
This lecture covers the motivation and implementation of branch predictors.
What's included
5 videos1 reading
5 videos•Total 76 minutes
- Branch Cost Motivation•7 minutes
- Branch Prediction Introduction•5 minutes
- Static Outcome Prediction•16 minutes
- Dynamic Outcome Prediction•29 minutes
- Target Address Prediction•19 minutes
1 reading•Total 60 minutes
- Readings•60 minutes
This lecture covers the advanced mechanisms used to improve cache performance.
What's included
6 videos1 reading
6 videos•Total 105 minutes
- Basic Cache Optimizations•16 minutes
- Cache Pipelining•14 minutes
- Write Buffers•10 minutes
- Multilevel Caches•28 minutes
- Victim Caches•10 minutes
- Prefetching•26 minutes
1 reading•Total 45 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
This lecture covers more advanced mechanisms used to improve cache performance.
What's included
4 videos2 readings
4 videos•Total 70 minutes
- Multiporting and Banking•20 minutes
- Software Memory Optimizations•27 minutes
- Non-blocking Caches•20 minutes
- Critical Word First and Early Restart•3 minutes
2 readings•Total 55 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
- Problem Set 3 Solutions•10 minutes
This lecture covers memory management and protection.
What's included
5 videos2 readings
5 videos•Total 79 minutes
- Memory Management Introduction•13 minutes
- Base and Bound Registers•12 minutes
- Page Based Memory Systems•27 minutes
- Translation and Protection•15 minutes
- TLB Processing•12 minutes
2 readings•Total 85 minutes
- Readings•75 minutes
- Problem Set 4 & 4A•10 minutes
This lecture covers the vector processor and optimizations for vector processors.
What's included
6 videos1 reading
6 videos•Total 81 minutes
- Address Translation Review•10 minutes
- Cache and Memory Protection Interaction•22 minutes
- Vector Processor Introduction•18 minutes
- Vector Parallelism•7 minutes
- Vector Hardware Optimizations•19 minutes
- Vector Software and Compiler Optimizations•6 minutes
1 reading•Total 90 minutes
- Readings•90 minutes
This lecture covers different types of multithreading.
What's included
6 videos1 reading
6 videos•Total 83 minutes
- Reduction, Scatter/Gather, and the Cray 1•9 minutes
- SIMD•7 minutes
- GPUs•20 minutes
- Multithreading Motivation•8 minutes
- Coarse-Grain Multithreading•26 minutes
- Simultaneous Multithreading•13 minutes
1 reading•Total 45 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
This lecture covers the concepts of parallelism, consistency models, and basic parallel programming techniques.
What's included
4 videos1 reading
4 videos•Total 60 minutes
- SMT Implementation•17 minutes
- Introduction to Parallelism•18 minutes
- Sequential Consistency•21 minutes
- Introduction to Locks•4 minutes
1 reading•Total 30 minutes
- Readings•30 minutes
This lecture covers the solutions for the consistency problem in parallel programming.
What's included
5 videos
5 videos•Total 66 minutes
- Sequential Consistency Review•4 minutes
- Locks and Semaphores•10 minutes
- Atomic Operations•27 minutes
- Memory Fences•11 minutes
- Dekker's Algorithm•14 minutes
This lecture covers the implementation of small multiprocessors.
What's included
5 videos2 readings
5 videos•Total 86 minutes
- Locking Review•2 minutes
- Bus Implementation•12 minutes
- Cache Coherence•17 minutes
- Bus-Based Multiprocessors•5 minutes
- Cache Coherence Protocols•49 minutes
2 readings•Total 55 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
- Problem Set 4 Solutions•10 minutes
This lecture covers the design of interconnects for a multiprocessor.
What's included
4 videos2 readings
4 videos•Total 72 minutes
- More Cache Coherence Protocols•21 minutes
- Introduction to Interconnection Networks•9 minutes
- Message Passing•27 minutes
- Interconnect Design•15 minutes
2 readings•Total 100 minutes
- Readings•90 minutes
- Problem Set 5 & 5A•10 minutes
This lecture covers the design of interconnects for multiprocessor and network topology.
What's included
5 videos1 reading
5 videos•Total 77 minutes
- Networking Review•8 minutes
- Topology•19 minutes
- Topology Parameters•14 minutes
- Network Performance•16 minutes
- Routing and Flow Control•20 minutes
1 reading•Total 105 minutes
- Readings•105 minutes
This lecture covers the motivation and implementation of directory protocol used for coherence on large multiproccesors.
What's included
6 videos2 readings1 assignment
6 videos•Total 83 minutes
- Credit Based Flow Control•7 minutes
- Deadlock•10 minutes
- False Sharing•9 minutes
- Introduction to Directory Coherence•13 minutes
- Implementation•29 minutes
- Scalability of Directory Coherence•14 minutes
2 readings•Total 55 minutes
- Readings•45 minutes
- Problem Set 5 Solutions•10 minutes
1 assignment•Total 30 minutes
- Final Exam•30 minutes
Instructor
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Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani
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International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad
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Reviewed on Oct 4, 2020
Nice course helped to clear various concepts of computer architecture from an elementary level to advanced with swift flow in the teaching material.
Reviewed on Jan 18, 2021
Great course, but quite difficult. I recommend working through all of the problem sets. The video lectures are more important than the textbook readings.
Reviewed on Sep 16, 2017
This is a great course. I learned tremendously.The only wish is that it is updated with the new materials and the new text book (H&P 6th, planned soon) in the near future.
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