Course Overview

1
Topic ?

• Course Overview

2
Guidelines

• Questions are rated by stars
• One Star Question ? Easy. Small definition,
  examples or generic formulas
• Two Stars Questions ? Medium. Long definitions or
  formulas
• Three Stars Questions ? Hard. A long exercise or
  definition with an example
• Four Stars Questions ? Very Hard. A time
  consuming question. Either a very large number of
  definitions referring to a topic or a time
  consuming exercise
• All questions have the same value
• Twelve must be answered
• At least one per section
• Three extra credit questions are permitted
• Twenty four questions in total
• Attempt the one and two starts questions first.

3
Guidelines

• No project related topics will be in the final
• No MESI
• But an architecture which implements it or other
  protocol from the MSI family
• No Dimension Order Routing
• But routing in any other network type
• No specific architecture examples will be asked
• Only the ones that are referred by name in this
  overview

4
Total Slide Count
Not counting Tutorials or this set nor the
Homework Solutions
5
Topic 1

• Introduction to the general concepts of parallel
  machines and their components
• Different types of computers
• Flynns Taxonomy
• ILP Classification
• Structural Composition
• The Illiac IV Supercomputer
• Type
• Interconnect network
• Components and Configurations
• Denelcor HEP and the Teras MTA
• Main Idea and parallelism exploitation
• SPMD
• What is it?

6
Topic 1

• Amdahls Law
• Definition of both old and revised
• Interconnection Network
• Main Concepts
• Main Attributes of Networks
• Different Types of networks
• What are they and their main attributes.
• Routing along different networks

7
Topic 2

• Vector Processors and Processing
• Vector problems and advantages
• Stride and length
• No data hazards, known access pattern and
  reduction of code size
• Cray 1
• Components
• Registers and functional units
• Vector Chaining
• Types of Vector operations
• Reservations
• Cray X-MP
• Irregular vector operations
• Performance Analysis
• Asymptotic Performance Parameter and the n ½
  parameter
• Serial, vector and vector chaining performance
• Vectors and Memory Systems
• Finding and reducing contention between different
  memory modules

8
Topic 3

• Hazards
• ILP and its exploitation
• Static ILP
• VLIW and several static techniques
• Software Pipelining, loop unrolling, and trace
  scheduling
• Examples and limitations
• Dynamic ILP
• Scoreboarding Approach
• Steps and Data hazards detection and resolution
• Components
• Reorder Buffer
• Steps and Data hazards detection and resolution
• Components
• Tomasulo Algorithm
• Steps and Data hazards detection and resolution
• Components
• Comparison, advantages and disadvantages of each
  approach
• Comparison between Static and Dynamic ILP
• Examples of VLIW and Superscalar

9
Topic 4

• TLP and SMT
• Definitions and implementations
• Components of the Shared Memory Execution Model
• Coherence V.S. Consistency
• Definitions and differences
• MCM Attributes and Myths
• Types of coherences
• Hybrid and uniform models
• Sequential consistency and Hybrid-weaker
  consistency models
• SC definition and sufficient conditions
• Category of Access Definition and classification.
• Sequential Consistency Compliancy
• Cache Coherency Models
• States and rationale
• DASH architecture
• Memory hierarchy, coherence and consistency models

10
Topic 5

• Atomicity
• Definition and Data Races
• Locks and Barriers
• Implementations
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Main features of all implementations
• Higher Abstraction synchronization constructs
• Semaphores
• Mutex
• Barriers
• Critical Sections
• Monitors
• Conditional Variables
• Performance Characterization
• Formulas and calculations

11
Topic 6

• Dataflow
• Actors, Snapshots and tokens
• Definitions, graphs and Schemes
• Well behaved and Well Formed graphs
• Definitions
• Static Versus Dynamic Dataflow
• Rationale behind their creation
• Main differences
• Advantages and Disadvantages of each approach
• Recursive Program Graphs
• Tail Recursion
• The I Structure
• Usage, definitions and operations
• EARTH Model
• Synchronization and thread models

12
Topic 6

• Transactional Memory
• Main properties of TM
• Definition of a transaction
• Data versioning and Conflict detection
• Types
• Pros and cons for each approach
• Nested Transactions
• Open and Close
• Definitions and characteristics

13
Final Note

• GOOD LUCK!!!!
• Dont worry too much
• It is not as difficult as it sounds