Version: 2026 Fall
Lecture:
M14:30-17:15 Venue: TBD
Course Instructor: Prof. Zhengrong Wang zhengrongwang@cuhk.edu.hk
Course Tutors:
TBD TBD
Description
Computer architecture is the glue that binds the worlds of hardware and software. Developing new architectures is the art and science of understanding the intrinsic properties of applications, developing and interconnecting hardware components to meet cost and performance goals, and creating abstractions that enable efficient use of hardware without sacrificing generality.
Several important specific goals are:
- Be able to reason about the relationship between application properties and how they are exploited by architecture/microarchitecture mechanisms.
- Gain intuition and reasoning skills regarding fundamental architecture tradeoffs of hardware design choices (performance/area/power/complexity/generality).
- Understand microarchitecture techniques behind extracting instruction level parallelism and mechanisms for exploiting locality.
- Gain appreciation for state-of-the-art microprocessors.
- Learn about evaluation methods, including simulation, analytical modeling, and mechanistic models. Specific focus on gem5/flashgpu-sim.
We use piazza for questions.
Course Requirements
- Reading Reviews (30%), Midterm (30%), Final Project (40%).
- A student must gain at least 50% of the full marks in order to pass the course.
References
There is no required textbook. You could refer to Synthesis Lectures and a lot of papers we are going to review in this course. If you do want a textbook, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach is an excellent choice.
Lectures
Subjected to changes.
| Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Review | Reference Material |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sep. 07 | L01 Intro | Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits – Moore ‘65 | ||
| 2 | Sep. 14 | L02 | |||
| 3 | Sep. 21 | L03 | |||
| 4 | Sep. 28 | L04 | |||
| 5 | Oct. 05 | L05 | |||
| 6 | Oct. 12 | L06 | |||
| 7 | Oct. 19 | Chung Yeung Festival | |||
| 8 | Oct. 26 | L08 | |||
| 9 | Nov. 02 | Midterm | |||
| 10 | Nov. 09 | L10 | |||
| 11 | Nov. 16 | L11 | |||
| 12 | Nov. 23 | L12 | |||
| 13 | Nov. 30 | L13 | |||
| 14 | Dec. 07 | Final Project | |||
| 15 | Dec. 14 | Final Project |
Review / Project Report
Please submit your final project through blackboard. If the submission is late but within 5 calendar days after the deadline, there will be a deduction of 10% per day from the marks awarded for the submitted piece of work.
Important Dates
- Nov. 2: In-class midterm exam.
- Dec. 13: Final project due on 11:59 pm.