Instructor Contact Information

• Instructor : Christopher Batten
• Office : 323 Rhodes Hall
• Email : cbatten cornell edu

Office Hours

I will try and be in my office from 10-11am on Wednesdays. In addition, please feel free to stop by whenever my office door is open, or email to make an appointment.

Prerequisites

This course is targeted towards first- or second-year graduate students, although it is also appropriate for advanced undergraduates who have the proper background. An undergraduate computer architecture course (ECE 4750 or equivalent) is required. Students should feel comfortable programming in C++ and have a reasonable understanding of basic computer engineering concepts such memory hierarchies, pipelining, digital logic design, and digital circuits.

Course Meeting Times

The course will meet from 10:10am to 11:25am every Tuesday and Thursday in 207 Upson Hall. We will start promptly at 10:10am, so please arrive on time. The first two-thirds of the course will include a mix of lectures and paper discussions. In the final third of the course, each project group will meet with me in 323 Rhodes Hall once per week to discuss their project. These meetings will occur during the normally scheduled course meeting times.

Paper Discussions

Some of the course meeting times will be reserved for discussing papers relevant to the lecture material. We will discuss two papers in one meeting time. The papers are available through the Cornell library, and electronic versions will also be posted on the course website. All registered students, formal listeners, and informal listeners are expected to carefully read all assigned papers and come to class prepared to discuss each paper's strengths, weakness, and directions for future work. Reading guides will be posted on the course website to help focus the student's time on the most relevant portions of each paper. The reading guides will often include a related paper and will note whether students are expected to briefly skim or read in detail this related work. In addition, students are required to prepare several short paper critiques and one long paper critique as described below.

Short Paper Critique

All registered students, formal listeners, and informal listeners are required to submit a short paper critique on one of the two papers assigned for each discussion. On weeks where we discuss papers on both Tuesday and Thursday, students will need to read four papers and write two short paper critiques (one due Tuesday and one due Thursday). Please start early to give yourself enough time to read and understand all four papers. A critique is not a summary of the paper! A critique requires judgement, synthesis, analysis, and opinion. Your critique should try and cover the following four aspects.

• Begin your critique with a short summary of the paper including what you feel are the key contributions of the paper. It is fine if your opinion of the key contributions does not match the authors' opinion of the key contributions.
• Discuss the strengths and weakness of the paper. Are the ideas solid but not broadly applicable? Are the assumed application requirements and technology constraints valid or unreasonable? Is the evaluation strong or lacking?
• Relate the paper to the topics we have been discussing in class and other research papers we have read. Does this paper contradict or support other papers we have read? Can the ideas in this paper be combined with other techniques we have discussed?
• Propose one solid new idea or direction for future research based on this paper. Please limit yourself to explaining one new idea in depth as opposed to listing a variety of superficial ideas. An idea might propose an improvement to a mechanism described in the paper; an idea might discuss in detail how to combine this technique with another technique; or an idea might describe issues in applying the analytical reasoning used in the paper to more modern technology constraints.

If your critique is just a summary, then it will be returned for revision. Critiques should be one to two pages long with 1.5 line spacing, 11pt font, and 1in margins. Short critiques must be submitted via email as a PDF before the beginning of class. No other format besides PDF will be accepted. Grammar, spelling, and writing style are important. Please spend time preparing and revising these critiques so that your ideas are presented concisely and effectively.

Paper Discussion Shepherding

Each registered student is responsible for shepherding one paper discussion. Please email me if you would like to volunteer to shepherd a specific paper, otherwise I will have to pick which students shepherd which papers. When shepherding a paper, the student should read the paper in particular detail trying to understand every aspect of the paper. The student might also need to review some of the related work mentioned in the paper. The student then gives a 10-minute presentation before we start discussing the paper in class. This presentation should briefly summarize the main points of the paper, possibly clarifying anything that the student thought was unclear. The presentation should end with some topics for discussion. Shepherding a paper then involves helping me to lead the discussion. For example, the paper shepherd might answer another student's question about some specific part of the paper. Or if the discussion seems to be lagging, then the shepherd can propose a new topic for discussion. After class, the paper shepherd reflects on the discussion, reviews the submitted short paper critiques, and possibly investigates any issues that are still unclear. This could even involve emailing the authors of the paper for clarification. The shepherd is then responsible for writing a long paper critique (four to five pages). This critique should be similar in spirit and format as the short paper critiques but with much greater detail. Long paper critiques are due via email, no later than two weeks from the day of discussion. When shepherding a paper, the student does not need to submit a short paper critique for that day of discussion.

Final Project

Students will spend the final portion of the semester working in small groups to design, implement, and evaluate an interesting research idea related to chip-level interconnection networks. Groups should include exactly two students if at all possible. Students are strongly encouraged to select projects that overlap with their own research. For example, students working on emerging technologies might study the implication of these technologies on interconnection networks; students working on digital circuits might design a network component at the circuit-level; students working on processor core architecture might study network architectures that effectively interconnect their core design; students working at the application-level might evaluate the impact of a interconnection network in a real machine when running an interesting application. Your short paper critiques as well as the critiques of the other students should provide a great source of inspiration for project ideas. I am very open to creative project ideas. Although I am much more interested in projects that tackle interesting new ideas, it is also possible for students to pick a recent paper from a top-tier conference and validate some of the paper's results. Students are on their own for setting up an appropriate evaluation framework, although I can provide some suggestions for getting started with Simics+GEMS, booksim, or my own mtlsim framework. A short three- to four-page project proposal is due before class on April 1st (same font, spacing, and margin format as the short critiques). Each group will give an 8- to 10-minute presentation on either May 4th, and submit a six- to eight-page conference-style paper by 5:00pm on May 7th. The paper should be single spaced, double column, 10pt font, with 1in margins in a similar format as the research papers we have been discussing in class. There are absolutely no extensions for the final paper.

Quiz

The quiz will be in class on March 18 and cover both the lecture material and paper discussion. Students are allowed to use a calculator during the quiz. The quiz will be "closed-book" and "closed-notes", but "open-papers". This means that you will be allowed to refer to the twelve primary papers that we will have discussed in class prior to the quiz. Please note the following:

• Students may only refer to the twelve primary papers (no secondary papers)
• Students may only refer to hard copies (laptops cannot be used during the quiz)
• Students may only refer to "clean" hard copies (no annotations or notes)
• Students are responsible for printing their own hard copies
• Students may not share hard copies with others during the quiz
• Students may not share a calculator with others during the quiz

The clever student will realize that the twelve primary papers contain a wealth of basic background information that might be useful when answering the quiz questions. So it is recommended that you study your notes and the reference texts, review the papers discussed in class, and also become familiar with what background information is presented in each of the primary papers. Having said this, be aware that some papers use different notation and different equations from what we used in class. The material presented in class always takes precedence over what is in the papers.

You are on your honor to only refer to "clean" hard copies of just the twelve primary papers. A little bit of underlining here or there is fine. Detailed notes scribbled in all of the margins is not fine. This is a graduate-level class, so I am trusting all of you not to abuse this. You are also perfectly free to skip bringing hard copies. You will not need the actual hard copies to answer any of the questions.

Grades

Grades will be based on class discussion (10%), short paper critiques (10%), one long paper critique (20%), one quiz (20%), and a final project (40%).

Textbook

The primary textbook for the course will be "Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks" by William James Dally and Brian Towles (available at the Cornell Bookstore). This book provides an excellent introduction to the field of interconnection networks and is a good addition to your bookshelf. "Interconnection Networks: An Engineering Approach" by Jose Duato, Sudhakar Yalamanchili, and Lionel Ni is another useful reference. Students might also be interested in reading a shorter overview text titled "Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture: On-Chip Networks" by Natalie Jerger and Li-Shiuan Peh. The Cornell Engineering Library has a hard copy of this text on reserve.

Student Mailing List

I will mail all announcements to the course email list at ece5970 csl cornell edu. All registered students, formal listeners, and informal listeners should be on this mailing list.

Collaboration and Academic Honesty Policy

Students must not discuss the quiz's contents with other students who have not yet taken the quiz. If prior to taking it, you are inadvertently exposed to material in a quiz - by whatever means - you must immediately inform me. Students are encouraged to discuss the assigned paper readings amongst themselves before our in-class discussion, but the actual writing for all paper critiques must be done individually.