UW-Madison Computer Architecture

The computer architecture group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is
one of the best in the world. The faculty have more than 100 years of
research experience resulting in key contributions to:

• branch prediction (e.g., two-bit dynamic algorithm)
• caches (non-blocking caches and cold, capacity, and conflict misses)
• coherence (write-once)
• decoupled superscalar architectures (a forerunner to now conventional superscalar)
• distributed shared memory via hardware or software (Tempest, Typhoon, & Blizzard))
• memory consistency models (processor consistency and data-race-free)
• out-of-order execution (reorder buffers, RUU)
• simulation (Wisconsin Wind Tunnel, SimpleScalar)
• pipelines (optimal clocking)
• precise interrupts (reorder buffers and future files)
• system area network interfaces (cacheable device registers)
• synchronization (queue-on-lock-bit)
• translation lookaside buffer and page table design (with superpages)
• trace caches
• Multiscalar architecture (speculative multithreading, Kestrel implementation, memory disambiguation/ARB)
• value prediction
• Token Coherence
• LogTM - Log-Based Hardware Transactional Memory
• GEMS - Wisconsin General Execution-Driven Multiprocessor Simulator

Key awards and recognitions include:

• Eckert-Mauchly Award, the highest award in computer architecture (Sohi)
• 2009 ACM SIGARCH Distinguished Service Award (Hill)
• Sohi elected to National Academy of Engineering
• Eckert-Mauchly Award, the highest award in computer architecture (Smith)
• Maurice Wilkes Award, for mid-career researchers in computer architecture (Sohi)
• NSF Presidential Young Investigator Awards (Hill & Wood)
• Program Chairs of the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (Goodman, Hill, Smith, & Sohi) and ASPLOS (Wood)
• ACM Fellow (Hill, Sohi, Wood)
• IEEE Fellow (Hill, Sohi, Wood)
• Eight Wisconsin
  papers were selected by former program chairs for Selected Papers from
  the First 25 International Symposia on Computer Architecture (more than
  any other institution).

An Early Wisconsin Computer

• Wisconsin Integrated Synchronous Computer (WISC)
• Designed by Gene Amdahl in 1950 to perform calcuations for his Physics Ph.D.
• Building Completed in 1955 by the Electrical Engineering Dept.
• Could perform 60 operations per second (0.000001 MHz).
• Now at the Computer History Museum, Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA.
• Source: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/wisc.html