Università degli Studi di Siena Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics (DIISM) Course of High-Performance Computer Architecture 2025-2026

Latest News (home)   Registration   Lessons (restricted access)   Errata slides   Tools for lab   Syllabus   Office Hours   previus exams   Projects   Exam Rules   RELATED LINKS   BEST PROJECTS bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="840" height="3900" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" valign="top" align="left"> COURSE SCHEDULE (TENTATIVE): THE FOLLOWING DATES ARE INDICATIVE AND RELATED TO THE HYPOTHETIC REGULAR PROGRESS OF THE LESSONS. NOTE (THIS HAS BEEN ASKED TO ME ...) THE NUMBERING OF LESSON REFERS ONLY TO THE TOPIC, IT DOES NOT IMPLY BY ANY MEANS THAT THE LESSONS WILL BE GIVEN IN A CERTAIN ORDER. NOTE: the actual schedule will be updated weekly. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: M. Dubois, M. Annavaram, P. Stenstrom, "Parallel Computer Organization and Design", Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-0-521-88675-8  LESSON #01 of 02-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction, Evaluating Computers, Pipelining (PART A) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois: Chap. 1,3.3 (Hennessy-Patterson-4: 2.1,2.2) (Hennessy-Patterson-5: 3.1,3.2)  LESSON #01 of 03-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction, Evaluating Computers, Pipelining (PART B) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois: Chap. 1,3.3 (Hennessy-Patterson-4: 2.1,2.2) (Hennessy-Patterson-5: 3.1,3.2)  LESSON #02 of 07-Oct-2025 (14:00-15:00) Dynamic Instruction Scheduling PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois: Chap. 3.4,3.4.1 (Hennessy-Patterson-4 - 2.4,2.5) (Hennessy-Patterson-5 - 3.4,3.5) An Efficient Algorithm for Exploiting Multiple Arithmetic Units tomasulo.c  PRACTICING/LAB #01 of 07-Oct-2025 (15:00-16:00) Dynamic Scheduling exercize. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of 23-06-2005. Empty working sheet (for the above exercize)  LESSON #03 of 09-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Branch Prediction: speculation of branch condition and branch target, BPRED, BTB. Predictor types, Bimodal, BHSR, BHT, PHT, 2-level adaptive. Other predictors (gshare, gselect). PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois - 3.3.4,3.4.3 (Hennessy-Patterson-4 - 2.3) (Hennessy-Patterson-5 - 3.3) Optional reading: [Yeh, Patt - 1992] Optional reading: [Nair - 1995] Optional reading: [Young - 1995] Optional reading: [McFarling - 1993]  PRACTICING/LAB #02 of 10-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction to Linux (PART A) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: A Linux Command Reference  PRACTICING/LAB #02 of 14-Oct-2025 (14:00-16:00) Introduction to Linux (PART B) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: A Linux Command Reference  LESSON #05 of 16-Oct-2025 (9:00-10:00) Introduction to Superscalar Processors: general scheme and Renaming. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 3.3.3,3.4.6 (Hennessy-Patterson-4 - 2.6-2.9) (Hennessy-Patterson-5 - 3.6-3.10)  LESSON #06 of 16-Oct-2025 (10:00-11:00) Superscalar execution example: Re-Order Buffer and Instruction Window. Case studies: MIPS, Alpha, AMD, Intel, ARM. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 3.4.4,3.4.5,3.4.7,3.4.8,3.4.9 detailed output of the example analyzed during the lesson.  LESSON #08 of 17-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Software methods to extract Instruction Level Parallelsim. Animated slide for the software pipelining example. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 3.3.5,3.5,3.5.1-5 (Hennessy-Patterson-4 2.7-2.8)  PRACTICING/LAB #03 of 21-Oct-2025 (14:00-16:00) Exercizes on Depenencies, Superscalar, VLIW processors, Tomasulo. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of the 07-07-2009. Exercize #2 of the exam of the 07-07-2009. Exercize #1 of the exam of the 30-06-2008. Exercize #1 of the exam of the 20-01-2010.  PRACTICING/LAB #04 of 23-Oct-2025 (9:00-10:00) Various excersizes. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of the 04-02-2013.  PRACTICING/LAB #04d of 23-Oct-2025 (10:00-11:00) Using the Superscalar simulator FREESS PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Educational Simulator FreeSs Exercize #1 of the exam of the 31-10-2018. Output of the FreeSs Simulator for this exercize  PRACTICING/LAB #05 of 24-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Various excersizes. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES:  PRACTICING/LAB #06 of 28-Oct-2025 (14:00-16:00) Various excersizes. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES:  30-Oct-2025 - MIDTERM TEST (9:00-12:00) Logistical instructions: To allow for 2 (full) hours and a quarter, equivalent to 3 academic hours, we will begin the test at 8:45 am. We recommend arriving in the lab (for the practical test) starting at 8:30 am.  LESSON #11 of 31-Oct-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction to multiprocessor systems, Flynn's taxonomy, UMA, NUMA, COMA systems, programming models PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 5.1,5.4 (see also Culler-Singh, Cap.1)  LESSON #12 of 04-Nov-2025 (14:00-16:00) Coherence Protocols: Write Update, Write Invalidate, Hybrid. Snoopy based protocols: the MESI and DRAGON protocols PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 5.4,5.5,7.3 (see also Culler-Singh, Cap.5)  LESSON #14 of 06-Nov-2025 (9:00-11:00) Memory Consistency Models: Sequential Consistency and Relaxed Consistency PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 7.4,7.5,7.6,7.7 (v. Culler-Singh, cap. 5.2, 5.5) Optional reading (open-access): A Primer on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence, Second Edition Optional reading: Litmus Tests for checking Memory Models  LESSON #60 of 07-Nov-2025 (9:00-10:00) Introduction to FPGAs PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Optional reference: 1364-2001 - IEEE Standard Verilog Hardware Description Language Optional reference: 1076-2019 - IEEE Standard for VHDL Language Reference Manual Free book: L.H. Crockett et al. "The Zynq book"  LESSON #63 of 07-Nov-2025 (10:00-11:00) High-level FPGA Programming PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: https://www.khronos.org/sycl  PRACTICING/LAB #09 of 11-Nov-2025 (14:00-16:00) Exercizes on Coherency from past exams. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #3 of the exam of the 07-07-2009 - (Coherence: Dragon vs. MESI). Exercize #2 of the exam of the 10-02-2016 - (Coherence - MSI vs MESI, 3 streams). Exercize #1 of the exam of the 16-01-2015 - (Competitive Protocol).  PRACTICING/LAB #19 of 13-Nov-2025 (9:00-11:00) Various exercizes from previous exams. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of the 20-01-2010 - (MSI protocol). spreadsheet for this excercize (20-01-2010) Exercize #3 of the exam of the 10-02-2016 - (Consistency and use of FENCE). Exercize #1 of the exam of the 31-01-2011 - (Coherence - Bit-Vector vs. Single-Sharer).  PRACTICING/LAB #20 of 14-Nov-2025 (9:00-11:00) Various exercizes from previous exams. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of the 21-12-2016 - (Coherence - Dragon patterns). Exercize #1 of the exam of the 19-12-2018 - (Coherence - Dragon, TAS best/worst). Exercize #1 of the exam of the 23-12-2020 - (Coherence - Competitive, TAS best/worst).  PRACTICING/LAB #21 of 18-Nov-2025 (14:00-16:00) Various exercizes from previous exams. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #1 of the exam of the 27-11-2023 - (Coherence - MOESI patterns. Exercize #2 of the exam of the 18-12-2015 - (Coherence and Interleaving - Jacobi).  20-Nov-2025 - FINAL TEST (9:00-12:00) Logistical instructions: To allow for 2 (full) hours and a quarter, equivalent to 3 academic hours, we will begin the test at 8:45 am. We recommend arriving in the lab (for the practical test) starting at 8:30 am.  LESSON #21 of 21-Nov-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction to Parallel Programming PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: OpenCilk @ MIT Programming in Cilk  LESSON #22 of 25-Nov-2025 (14:00-15:00) Parallelsim and Performance PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Reading: He et al., The Cilkview Scalability Analyzer Optional reading: Frigo et al., The implementation of the Cilk-5 multithreaded language Notes for this lesson (es.11 26-11-2024)  PRACTICING/LAB #11A of 25-Nov-2025 (15:00-16:00) Experimenting several programming models: Pthreads, OpenMP, TBB, Cilk PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Source code of the examples in Pthreads, OpenMP, TBB, Cilk  PRACTICING/LAB #11B of 27-Nov-2025 (9:00-10:00) Methodology for carrying out performance measurements; discussion on projects; visit to Computer Architecture Lab PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: SAMPLE PROJECT  PRACTICING/LAB #11C of 27-Nov-2025 (10:00-11:00) Experimenting Cilk Tools. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Using CILKTOOLS (cilkscale,cilksan)  LESSON #23 of 28-Nov-2025 (9:00-11:00) Introduction to CUDA parallel programming model PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: D. B. Kirk, W. W. Hwu, Programming Massively Parallel Processors 3rd Edition, Morgan kaugfman, 2017: CAP.1, CAP.2.  LESSON #24 of 02-Dec-2025 (14:00-16:00) CUDA Threads, Atomics, and Memory (PART A) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: D. B. Kirk, W. W. Hwu, Programming Massively Parallel Processors 3rd Edition, Morgan kaugfman, 2017: CAP.4, CAP.5.  LESSON #24 of 04-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) CUDA Threads, Atomics, and Memory (PART B) PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: D. B. Kirk, W. W. Hwu, Programming Massively Parallel Processors 3rd Edition, Morgan kaugfman, 2017: CAP.4, CAP.5.  PRACTICING/LAB #13 of 05-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) Overview of CUDA environment and simple examples. PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: In the lab, download: PPF-LAB-V07.tgz initial examples At home (you MUST have an NVIDIA card in your computer): docker pull robgiorgi/ppf-cuda-v07 CUDA CheatSheet MATRIX-MULTIPLY CODE (optional reference) CUDA Programming Guide (optional reference) CUDA Runtime API  LESSON #31 of 09-Dec-2025 (14:00-15:00) Clusters PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Dubois 5.2.2, 5.3  LESSON #32 of 09-Dec-2025 (15:00-16:00) Introduction to MPI PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Reference site for OpenMPI:https://www.open-mpi.org/doc/ Reference tutorial: A. Lumsdaine et al., OpenMPI Tutorial  PRACTICING/LAB #16 of 11-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) Using MPI PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: hello.c HELLOWORLD MPI CODE testmpi.c TESTMPI CODE mmxmpi2.c MATRIX-MULTIPLICATION MPI CODE  PRACTICING/LAB #17 of 12-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) Study of specific parallel patterns in CUDA PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #2 of the exam of the 19-12-2017 - (CUDA - Histogram). CUDA - - Histogram Example Code  PRACTICING/LAB #18 of 16-Dec-2025 (14:00-16:00) Study of specific parallel patterns in Cilk/OpenMP/MPI PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: Exercize #2 of the exam of the 18-12-2019 - (Cilk/Histogram). Exercize #2 of the exam of the 19-12-2018 - (OpenMP/Histogram). Exercize #2 of the exam of the 23-12-2020 - (MPI/Histogram). CILK - Histogram Example Code OPENMP - Histogram Example Code MPI - Histogram Example Code  PRACTICING/LAB #61 of 18-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) Vitis Acceleration Application Flow PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: https://github.com/Xilinx/Vitis-Tutorials  PRACTICING/LAB #29 of 19-Dec-2025 (9:00-11:00) Review of Course Projects PRESENTATION/SLIDES/VIDEO: IN PREPARATION RESOURCES: See also the dedicated project page and list of themes.  from 23-Dec-2025 to 06-Jan-2026: No Lesson VACANZA/PONTE To visualize the content of the above presentations in Acrobat format (.pdf) you can use Acrobat Reader, freely realesed by Adobe (Download Acrobat Reader)