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

Simple Ideas

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 & Michael R. Marty.

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

   Multiprocessors Should Support Simple Memory Consistency Models, Mark D. Hill.

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

   Cost-Effective Parallel Computing, David A. Wood & Mark D. Hill.

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.

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

   Evaluating Associativity in CPU Caches, Mark D. Hill & Alan Jay Smith.