CS-350 Term Project

Charles Abzug, Ph.D.Department of Computer Science

James Madison UniversityHarrisonburg, VA 22807

Voice Phone: 540-568-8746, E-mail: CharlesAbzug@ACM.org

Home Page: http://www.cs.jmu.edu/users/abzugcx

© 1998 Charles Abzug

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Form

• Groups of ~4 (>3, <5)

• Three Deliverables:– Paper (<12 pages single-spaced, numbered, font size 11-

pt, including figures, but exclusive of title page, Table of Contents, Bibliography, Index):

– HARDCOPY and SOFTCOPY

– In-Class Presentation (PowerPoint Slides, black-and-white, no stunts, gimmicks, or effects)

– SOFTCOPY of PowerPoint slides

– Work Breakdown: Description of what each member of the group contributed to the whole

– HARDCOPY

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Term Paper Requirements• Cover Page, containing descriptive title and names of all

group participants

• Table of Contents– One major section for each group member, as in this form:

– Student 1– Student 2

– Student n– Minor sections under each major section, labeled as to

subject matter

• Text with included figures

• Bibliography: full bibliographic citations

• Last page: – Identification of [Student 1 . . .Student n] by name– Brief description of work performed by each student

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Subject:

• Organization and Architecture of a commercially-available computer system

• Examples:– Various RISC chips: PowerPC, Sun SPARC, RISC, MIPS– IBM: System 360/370/390, System 36, System 38, RS/6000– Motorola: 6800 and 68000-series– Intel: 80xyz and their successors– AMD and Cyrix: competitor chips to the Intel– DEC: PDP-1, PDP-8, PDP-11, PDP-15, VAX, and Alpha– SGI: R10000– Tandem/16, Stratus, and other fault-tolerant and high-

availability architectures– CDC, Cray, Thinking Machines, Intel and other supercomputers

• Constraint: No more than one group per course section on one system

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Coverage

• Registers: General-purpose and special-purpose

• Instruction Set

• Addressing Modes

• Technologies Used

• Type: CISC or RISC

• Memory map

• Speed

• Factors Affecting Performance (e.g., pipelining, suprascalar architecture, conditional/speculative execution, etc.)

• Perspective on role in the marketplace

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Critical Concept

• Each group should focus in on one critical concept.

• Each critical concept should be covered by no more than ONE group presenting each course section.

• Example concepts:– General issues of performance– Pipelining and Superpipelined architecture– Superscalar architecture– Performance benchmarks (Whetstone, Dhrystone, Linpack,

Livermore Kernels, Ziff-Davis)– Conditional Execution and Speculative Execution– Architectural family (e.g., IBM System 360, DEC VAX)– Architectural types: SISD, SIMD, MIMD– RISC as an architectural concept: principal features– Dataflow architectures– Supercomputing

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Guidelines on Content

• Don’t swallow the whole animal. Cut it up into bite-sized pieces, pick a few of those, and chew on them.

• Talk only about what you understand. Don’t try to snow us with a bunch of jargon, or with technical terms whose meanings you do not know.

• Be very wary of manufacturers claims; stick to objective facts– (e.g., “Manufacturer claims that the processor has a

performance measured at 48.2 Dhrystones”, or, better still, “tested by Consumers’ Union and certified by them as having a performance of 7,182 GFLOPS’; but NOT “outperforms manufacturer Y’s products under all conditions” (we know it’s true the manufacturer told us so, and he wouldn’t lie, would he?)

• Be selective!

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Guidelines on Slides

• Font large enough to be CLEARLY readable from back of room

• Show only simple diagrams.

• Several simple diagrams are much more communicative than one that is monstrously detailed.

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Guidelines on Presentation

• Practice to stay within the allotted time.

• Speak up

• Face the audience

• Use notes if you must, but don’t read your presentation.

• Try to project enthusiasm.

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End