Advanced computer architecture

CS-470 / 8 credits

Teacher: Ienne Paolo

Language: English

Summary

This course explores techniques for exploiting instruction-level parallelism both statically and dynamically. It also addresses the generation of hardware accelerators from programming languages and investigates security issues related to microarchitectural features, including side-channel attacks.

Content

Pushing processor performance to its limits:

  • Principles of Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP)
  • Register renaming techniques
  • Prediction and speculation
  • Simultaneous multithreading
  • VLIW and compiler techniques for ILP
  • Dynamic binary translation

Domain specific architectures and accelerators:

  • Specificities of embedded vs. general computing processors
  • High-Level Synthesis and accelerators

Hardware security:

  • Information leakage through the microarchitecture
  • Trusted Execution Environments
  • Physical side-channel attacks

Learning Prerequisites

Required courses

  • CS-200 Computer Architecture

Assessment methods

Homeworks (30%)

Final exam (70%)

Supervision

Forum Yes

Resources

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

No

Moodle Link

In the programs

  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: mandatory
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: mandatory
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: optional
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: optional
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: mandatory
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: mandatory
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: optional
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: optional
  • Semester: Spring
  • Exam form: Written (summer session)
  • Subject examined: Advanced computer architecture
  • Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Lab: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
  • Type: optional

Reference week

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