Mark D. Hill Gene M. Amdahl Professor of Computer Sciences and Electrical & Computer Engineering

By Bob Rashid in 2006

Simple Ideas

See also All Publications & Talks.

While many academics strive for complex solutions, I am proud of my simple ideas.

1. Adds a simple multicore hardware corollary to Amdahl's Law.

   Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era,
   Mark D. Hill and Michael R. Marty,
   IEEE Computer, July 2008.
   Local copy: pdf
   Supplementary Website: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/amdahl/
   Related Talks: Google TechTalk 02/2009
   Related Talks: HPCA Keynote 02/2008 and Colloquium 01/2010
   Original Technical Report (UW CS-TR-2007-1593, April 2007): pdf

2. Argues why sequential consistency may be better than relaxed memory consistency models.

   Multiprocessors Should Support Simple Memory Consistency Models,
   Mark D. Hill,
   IEEE Computer, August 1998.
   Local copy: pdf
   2003 Dagstuhl Retrospective Talk: ppt

3. Shows that parallel computing is cost-effective whenever "speedup" exceeds "costup."

   Cost-Effective Parallel Computing,
   David A. Wood and Mark D. Hill,
   IEEE Computer, February 1995.
   Paper: final scanned pdf and near-final latex pdf.

4. Shows that fast hits for direct-mapped caches can lead to better performance than for set-associative caches.

   A Case for Direct-Mapped Caches,
   Mark D. Hill,
   IEEE Computer, December 1988.
   Paper: scanned pdf (2 MB)

5. Partitions cache misses into the 3Cs: compulsory, capacity, and conflicts misses (but the rest of the paper is complex).

   Evaluating Associativity in CPU Caches,
   Mark D. Hill and Alan Jay Smith,
   IEEE Transactions on Computers (TOC), December 1989.
   Paper: scanned pdf.