CS/ECE 752 Advanced Computer Architecture I Fall 2018 Section 1 Instructor Matthew D. Sinclair URL: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~sinclair/courses/cs752/fall2018/

Project

Project Preliminary Ideas: Due 9AM Friday, October 19th (or earlier) -- 5% of Project Grade
Proposal: Due 9AM on Friday, October 26th (or earlier) -- 10% of Project Grade
Progress Report: Due 9AM on Monday, November 12th -- 10% of Project Grade
Lightning Talk: Due 9AM Friday, November 30th -- 5% of Project Grade
Talks: Friday, December 7th, 9AM - 2PM -- 30% of Project Grade
Final Project Report: Due 5pm Friday, December 18th -- 40% of Project Grade

Weight: 35%

Project Goal

The project has two options. The first option is to do some original research in computer architecture (e.g., write a simulator and gather some simple numbers) or to re-validate data found in a published paper. This type of project is especially recommended for students considering a Ph.D. You will be graded on how well you define your problem, survey previous work, design and conduct experiments, and present your results. The goal to shoot for is a conference paper, like the ones in your reader. Since time is limited, however, the above goal is hard to reach, and I will reward those that aim high even if they do not completely succeed. The key is insuring that some aspects of your work are completely done; it is very hard to grade a project where the simulator did not quite work. This type of project should use groups of two. With my permission, project groups of one or three are permissible.

In the second option, you may work as a group of two to write a 15-20 page paper that surveys an area within computer architecture. The paper should: summarize work in an area, giving extensive references to support your arguments, present opinions of others for and against various options (with references), and conclude with your opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of arguments presented above. In the second option, you may work a group of two to write a paper that surveys an area within computer architecture. The paper should: summarize work in an area, giving extensive references, present opinions of others for and against various options (with references), and conclude with your opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of arguments presented above. You will be graded on the completeness of your survey, the accuracy of your summaries, the support you give for your opinions, and the quality of your presentation. Since a survey paper is "safer" than a research project, I will hold survey papers to a higher standard of completeness and analysis of the literature.

For this project, you may turn in your progress reports and final written report up to 24 hours late with a 25% penalty. I strongly recommend that you do not avail yourself of this option; your hard work deserves full credit.

Preliminary Project Ideas

Send your project ideas by email, use subject: [CS752 Project Ideas]. You should prepare 2-3 project ideas that you would like to pursue. It is fine to have a preferred topic, but you must think about at least one alternative. You should also tell me the names and email addresses of each of the project team members.

Proposal

Send your proposal by email, use subject: [CS752 Project Proposal] Lastname1/Lastname2. (If there are more than two project participants, please include their names as well.)

Proposals should be about two pages long. They should include:

• Names, ID #s, and email addresses of each of the project team members,
• A description of your topic,
• A statement of why you think the topic is interesting or important,
• For research projects, a description of the methods you will use to evaluate your ideas
• References to at least three relevant papers you have already read
• A plan to address other related work.

Progress Report

Send your Progress Report by email, use subject: [CS752 Progress Report] Lastname1/Lastname2. (If there are more than two project participants, please include their names as well.)

Progress Reports should include a revised version of the proposal plus one page describing accomplishments so far and any unresolved problems that you have encountered. Concentrate on describing sub-tasks completed, rather than the tasks started. For example, say "completed simulator design at subroutine level" rather than saying "started writing simulator".

It is also common for the list of related work to have expanded to 5-8 papers.

Your progress report will be graded using the following rubric: Progress Report Grading Rubric

Lightning Talk

Computer Architecture conferences are increasingly utilizing online lightning talks to motivate your conference talk. To help you prepare for this, your course project will also have a lightning talk. Your lightning talk should be a 90 second version of your talk designed to encourage people to attend your talk. The best talks will provide a memorable introduction to your talk. As incentive for making a good lightning talk, the best lightning talk will get to choose when they present during the Project Talks.

The only rules for the Lightning Talk are: a) it has to be 90 seconds or less, b) it cannot contain any inappropriate language, remarks, etc. and c) it should be done in a format that could potentially be uploaded to YouTube (since that's what conferences are doing nowadays). Beyond these requirements, you can be as creative as you would like. The goal is to stand out, while also relating the lightning talk to your project -- if your lightning talk is completely unrelated to the project, it likely won't help encourage people to attend. If only one person from the group appears in the video, then please send me an email (similar format to the other emails) explaining what the other project member(s) role(s) was.

Your lightning talk will be graded using the following rubric: Lightning Talk Grading Rubric

I have created a "group" upload for this on Canvas and placed you all into your project groups, but since this is the first time I'm trying it, each member of the group may need to upload the lightning talk individually. Please post any issues you encounter on Piazza.

Some examples of recent lightning talks, both good and bad, can be found ISCA 2018 and MICRO 2018.

Before, when the talks were done as part of the conference, I gave several lightning talks, which you can view here:

• ISCA 2017
• MICRO 2015
• ISCA 2015

Project Talks

We will schedule a mini-conference of 20-minute conference-style talks. All group members should deliver part of the talk. The talk should give highlights of the final report, including the problem, motivation, results, conclusions, and possible future work. Time limits will be enforced to let everyone present. Please, practice your talk to make it better and see how long it is. Have a plan for what slides to skip if you get behind. We will be using the same presentation grading rubric as prior semesters: Presentation Grading Rubric

Using subject: [CS752 Final Project Talk] Lastname1/Lastname2 (if more than two project participants, please include their names as well), email me final slides 90 minutes before the presentation.

Please see Oral Presentation Advice, including David Patterson's How to Give a Bad Talk and K. Compton and M. L. Chang's Terrible Presentations (...and how to not give one).

A rough timeline for the presentations is below (all times are approximate, but the order between groups is fixed). The presenting groups will be filled in based on people's selections -- recall that those with the best lightning talks get to choose when they want to present.

Final Report

Email a PDF with the subject: [CS752 Final Project Report] Lastname1/Lastname2 (same rules as above if more than two project participants).

Your group's PDF file should have the filename: cs752_report_lastname1_lastname2.pdf (same rules as above if more than two project participants).

Reports should consist of an abstract, body and optional appendices, much like a conference paper. The abstract should summarize the contributions of the report in one or two paragraphs. The length of the body should be the equivalent of 15-20 pages at double-spaced 10-point. The body must include a section that describes which tasks each group member worked on. If multiple group members worked on the same task, please explain what each group member did for that task. Additional supporting material of any length can be put in appendices. I will read the body and only skim appendices.

Your final report will be graded using the following rubric: Final Report Grading Rubric

If you would like help improving your writing, I encourage you to take advantage of the UW Writing Center. Professor Reps also has a good set of reference slides on how to write papers, which you may want to look at.

The report must be written in your own words. Please review the Writing Center guidelines on appropriate quotation, paraphrasing, and citation of prior work (PDF). Failure to substantially follow these guidelines will be treated as academic misconduct.

Topics

You are encouraged to come up with your own topic. Ideally, the topic will be related to your current research interests.

There can be value in combining your project with other work in one of two ways. First, if you have active research in a related area (e.g, an RA), you can do a deeper project by combining your current (supported) research with your course project. Second, it is also possible to do a single multi-disciplinary project to satisfy multiple courses (e.g., CS736). However, this must be coordinated with the other instructor(s) and you will be expected to do two (or more) projects worth of work. In all such cases, it is imperative that such overlaps be disclosed at the proposal stage so that we can address the scope of research that will be required.