EE 739 – PROCESSOR DESIGN

Course offered in:

2012-2013

Instructor(s):

Prof. Virendra Singh

Motivation behind the course:

Our generation has seen an exponential increase in processing power which is unheard of in any other scientific discipline. Is it not worthwhile to study what is at the very center of this revolution? At the very least you will be better informed while picking your next smartphone/ laptop.

Course Content:

The course covers the following topics in detail

-Instruction Set Architecture and its tradeoffs -Single Cycle RISC architecture -Multi Cycle RISC architecture -Pipelining and Data Dependence Handling -CISC Design using Hardware Flowchart method -Virtual Memory -Superscalar Design The course also ventures into the following topics.

-Simultaneous Multi-Threading -Branch Prediction Algorithms -State Maintenance and Recovery

Prerequisites:

The course has no pre-requisites, however B-Tech and Dual Degree students will find the microprocessors course (EE 309) and the accompanying lab useful in understanding the basics.

Feedback on Lectures:

The lectures were decent and the lecture material is detailed and concise. Attendance was not compulsory but it is better to attend the classes as the course is quite different from anything you might have studied before. So, to get a proper perspective one will need to attend classes.

Feedback on Tutorials, Assignments and Exams:

Exams were slightly difficult and open ended. Instead of being directly from the course material the questions encouraged the student to come up with his/her own unique solution. Assignments tend to be a little hectic, hence it is advisable to work on them from the get go.

Difficulty:

Since in this course the content is quite large, the course tends to be a little difficult. Pre-exam studying rarely helps and it is better to be regular in the coursework to derive any benefit from the course. The grading however is fairly peaceful and you can get a BB or more with minimal effort. Roughly seventy percent of the class were awarded BB or more.

Study Material and References:

• Nick Tredennick, Microprocessor Logic Design (good for studying Design using Hardware Flowchart)
• DA Patterson and JL Hennessey, Computer Architecture: A quantitative approach (Good for MIPS design, ISA fundamentals and Memory Hierarchy)
• JP Shen and MH Lipasti, Modern Processor Design (Good for Superscalar Design)

Review by – Nitesh Singh