Mark D. Hill Gene M. Amdahl & John P. Morgridge Professor Emeritus of Computer Sciences

Simple Ideas

See also All Publications & Talks.

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

1. A simple ”roofline” model for complex systems on a chip (SoCs).

   Gables: A Roofline Model for Mobile SoCs
   Mark D. Hill and Vijay Janapa Reddi
   The 25th IEEE International Symposium On High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA-2019)
   Local copy: pdf
   Talk: pptx & pdf
   Expanded ISPASS FASTPATH Talk: pptx & pdf
   Supplementary Material: Gables Home Page

2. 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 Talk Video: Google TechTalk 02/2009 (52 minutes)
   Related Talk Slides: pptx 01/2010
   Selected as an influential paper from the first 50 years of Computer.
   See others: https://www.computer.org/computer-magazine/from-the-archives-computers-legacy/
   2017 Retrospective: pdf
   
   

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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)

6. Partitions cache misses into the 3Cs: compulsory, capacity, and conflicts misses (in Section V-A 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.