EE 361L Lab 3: CPU Reports
October 15, 2012
Objectives
Students will work in groups of 2 and do research on a CPU architecture
(if there are an odd number of students in a section, the TA can form
one group of 3. Another option is a student does research on his
or her own). Some example architectures are
- MIPS R16000
- ALPHA EV68
- Sun UltraSPARC IV
- Power PC G5
- MC 68000 (Processor designed by Motorola and which was the CPU in
the first MacIntosh Computer)
- Intel Pentium 4
- Intel Pentium Xeon
- ARM Processor
- PIC Processor
- Cell processor for Playstation 3
You can find other processors in the survey "Great
Microprocessors
of the Past and Present" , which can be found in the CPU Shack.
Each group does an oral presentation and a written report about
their architectures. The reports should contain information on the
following
topics:
- Technology (brief)
- Architecture (includes instruction set architecture)
- Pipeline structure. This is discussed in Chapter 6 of the
textbook. There will be an overview of pipelining in one of the
lab
sections.
- Implementation. (Example topics like superscalar,
scoreboarding, out of order execution, etc.)
- Branch hardware
- Memory (main and virtual)
Note that we will not have covered (yet) many of these topics such
as pipelining, superscalar, scoreboarding, out of order execution,
branch hardware, caching. But do the research as best you
can. This may require some research on what is pipelining, what
is superscalar, etc. Many if not all of these concepts can be
found in the textbook. For example Chapter 6 covers pipelining,
and Chapter 7 covers caching. Though you may be unable to
understand the details of these concepts, you should get the
general idea.
The TA will present a brief tutorial on computer architecture to
familiarize students with many of the concepts.
You can also find tutorials on the web. Here some examples:
Assignment
- Written Report: The written report must include
a description of the number of pages each student contributed in the
Introduction section.
The group will get a chance to revise their reports after it
has been marked once by the TA and or instructor. Each student
must contribute at least 5 pages of text (not including the reference
list of course).
- Here is some information about good writing: from the Manoa Writing Program.
Also a good manual for writing is The Elements of Style by Strunk and
White. It's pretty cheap, small, paperback, and short.
It won't take you long to read it. You can get it at any
bookstore or online booksellers. The co-author E.B. White is
known for his children's books Stuart
Little and Charlotte's Web.
Apparently, there's an online
version, but it's difficult to read. So I recommend you get
the paperback.
- There is the Manoa Writing
Center that has its home in Sinclair Library. The Center has
free help with your writing. For example, you can take a draft of
your report and have a tutor go over it with you. Check out the
center web site and find out how you can make an appointment with a
tutor. If you don't use it for EE 361L, you may consider it for
future courses.
- Oral Report: The oral report will be around 8 minutes
per student, and will be in powerpoint. It will be done in Holmes
451 and a computer
projector will be available as well as a desktop or laptop. So
you only need to bring a thumb drive of your presentation. Since
each presentation will be by two students, the total time of a
presentation will be about 16 minutes. Given that each group will
take 20 minutes (there will be a couple of minutes to set up, etc),
nine groups (= 18 people) can be done in three hours. So we'll
have
- October 30 Tuesday 9AM-12noon: Nine groups give
presentations
- October 30 Tuesday 130PM-430PM: Nine groups give
presentations
- Nov 3 Saturday 9AM-11AM: Remaining groups give
presentations
The TA will organize the ordering of
the talks for these days, and will let you know a week in
advance. So be prepared to give your talk on your turn.
Instructions
on how the oral
presentations should be organized and delivered, and how they will be
graded:
Preparation Help: The
UH-Manoa campus has a
web
site for its oral communication (O) focus courses. At the
bottom of the web page you can find Teacher Resources which has a
number of useful links, e.g.,:
Grading
Writing style will account for 50% of the grade, oral presentation
style will account for 25% of the grade, and content will account for
25% of the grade. Note that the heavy weight of writing style is
to insure that the course meets the hallmarks of a writing-intensive
class.