Computer Architecture

References

The following is a collection of (mainly Web) resources on computer architecture. It includes course notes on some courses given in other universities with content similar to this one: the comments will point you to relevant sections. It also includes conference proceedings, papers, technical reports and other material which you may find useful for your essay assignment. Some of the links lead to overseas sites: they will not work if your computer is not connected to the Internet.

WARNING: Like almost everything else to do with computers, there is a lot of biased, dubious and doubtful information out there. There is also quite a lot that is just plain wrong. Beware of sources that demonstrate significant bias to one manufacturer's products for a start. The industry "comics" are generally full of articles of this type and, as a consequence, are not acceptable references for your essays. Look instead for scientific and technical journals published by IEEE, ACM, etc. (Although these often contain articles about individual commercial products written by employees of the manufacturer, their editorial policies limit the amount of pure "hype" which can appear in any one article. The articles also tend to be written by the designers - and thus contain significant technical detail - rather than the sales droids, who only concern themselves with pushing some particular commercial barrow.)

Texts

  1. General
    1. David A Patterson and John L Hennessy, Computer Organisation and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Morgan Kaufmann, 1994. ISBN 1-55860-281-X.
      QA76.9.C643P347 1994
      An excellent reference - many references to sections of this text will be found in these notes.
    2. V Carl Hamacher, Zvonko G Vranesic and Safwat G Zaky, Computer Organization, McGraw-Hill, 1996. ISBN 0-07-114323-8.
      Another excellent reference - source of material for some of these notes.
      Chapter 8 reviews a number of commercial processors.       621.381952 1984 COM
    3. Kai Hwang, Advanced Computer Architecture: Parallelism, Scalability, Programmability, McGraw-Hill, 1993. ISBN 0-07-113342-9.
      As its subtitle implies, leans towards parallel systems, but also contains useful material on single processors.
      004.35 1993 ADV
  2. Specific Processors
    1. Shlomo Weiss and James E Smith, POWER and PowerPC, Morgan Kaufmann, 1994. ISBN 1-55860-279-8.

Journal Articles

Required Reading

K C Yeager, The MIPS R10000 Superscalar Microprocessor, IEEE Micro, 16(2), 28-40, 1996.

Other useful articles

  1. Directions
    1. Christoforos E Kozyrakis and David A Patterson, "A New Direction for Computer Architecture Research", IEEE Computer, 31(11), 24-32, Nov. 1998.
      Suggests mobile computing is a major direction for computer architecture and discusses its requirements.
  2. Individual Processor Architectures
    1. IEEE Micro "Hot Chips" issues.
      Every year IEEE Micro publishes reviews of the "Hot Chips" of the year (usually including a significant research machine also).
      1. June: IBM System/6000 (Power), Clipper C400, Metaflow, iWarp, Datawave
      2. April: MIPS R4000, Motorola 88110, MIT's Message Driven Processor
      3. June: HP PA7100, DEC Alpha AXP and 21064, Pentium, Sparcle
      6. April: Pentium-Pro, AMD K5, MIPS R10000, UltraSparc I
      7. March: Talisman(3D graphics),Mpact,HP PA-8000, picoJava-I
      8. March/April: Ultra-SPARC-II, Hitachi's SH4 Multimedia Processor, NEC's V830R/AV (another multi-media processor), StrongARM
      9. March/April: IBM S/390, Alpha 21264, 3DNow!, EMU10K1 Digital Audio, Neon Graphics Accelerator
    2. "Hot Chips 8" Conference: slides
    3. D Dobberpuhl et al, A 200-MHz 64-bit Dual-Issue CMOS Microprocessor, IEEE J Solid State Circuits, 27(11), 1555-1567(1992).
      Describes the engineering of the first DEC Alpha.
    4. Tom R Halfhill, Beyond Pentium II BYTE, Dec 1997 The Intel/HP VLIW, Merced
  3. Cache
  4. Processor Performance
    1. Branches
      Uht et al., "Branch Effect Reduction Techniques", IEEE Computer, 30(5), 71-81(1997).
      "Branch effects are the biggest obstacle to gaining significant speedups when running general-purpose code .."
      A survey of techniques for reducing the cost of branches
  5. Memory Technology
    1. IEEE Micro, 17(6), Nov/Dec, 1997.
      Contains a series of articles on Advanced Memory Technology
    2. Y Nunomura, T Shimizu and O Tomisawa, "M32R/D - Integrating DRAM and Microprocessor", IEEE Micro, 17(6), 40-48 (1997).
      Discusses difficulty of integrating a microprocessor and DRAM on the same die: one possible solution to the bottleneck between the processor and main memory - put them both on the same piece of Si!
  6. Intelligent Memory
    1. D Patterson et al, "A Case for Intelligent DRAM: IRAM" IEEE Micro, 17(2), 34-44(1997).
      Discusses the processor/memory performance gap and proposes one solution.
    2. S A McKee, R H Klenke, K L Wright, W A Wulf, M H Salinas, J H Aylor and A P Batson, "Smarter Memory: Improved Bandwidth for Streamed References", IEEE Computer, 31(7), 54-63 (1998).
  7. Optical Computing
    1. T J Drabik et al, 2D Silicon/Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulators, IEEE Micro, 15(4), 67 (1995).
      SLMs are a key component for optical computers
  8. Benchmarking
    1. R Giladi, Evaluating the MFLOPS Measure, IEEE Micro, 16(4), 69-75 (1996).
      An assessment of MFLOPS as a performance metric.
  9. Shared Memory
    1. J Protic, M Tomasevic and V Milutinovic, Distributed Shared Memory: Concepts and Systems, IEEE Parallel and Distributed Technology, 4(2), 63-79 (1996).
      A review of distributed shared memory systems.
    2. R B Gillert, Memory Channel Network for PCI, IEEE Micro, 16(1), 12-18(1996).
      Describes DEC's memory channel architecture - which provides "a form of distributed shared memory" at the page level.
    3. D Lilja, Cache coherence in large-scale memory multiprocessors: issues and comparisons", ACM Computing Surveys, 25(3), 303-338 (1993).
  10. Interconnect
    1. J R Mashey, "From Busses to Modular, Distributed Crossbars: Not All Shared-memory Systems Are Equal", SGI Web pages, date unknown

Lecture Notes

  1. Computer Architecture Courses

Simulations

  1. MIPS animator written by Alan Hui (Monash University)

Manufacturers' Descriptions of State-of-the-Art Systems

  1. Sun Microsystems Enterprise 10000

Miscellaneous

Curiosities

  1. Single Instruction Computer - it's possible to design a processor with only one instruction!
    See also Patterson and Hennessy, p 162 ff.
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© John Morris, 1998