The goal of this course is to provide students with a modern view of computer architecture, and introduce them to the latest developments, challenges, issues, risks, and trends that drive the modern microprocessor industry. By taking this course, students will:

• become conversant with fundamental computer architecture concepts,
• be able to read and evaluate specs of modern architectures,
• understand state-of-the-art design mechanisms and optimizations, and their implications on performance, power efficiency, and security, and
• learn how to craft attacks that exploit security vulnerabilities in modern processors.

Required Textbook:

Hennessy and Patterson, "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", Sixth Edition

Other (frequently referenced) online resources:

• Books from Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture
• Papers from top architecture conferences and journals, as assigned.

Contact

We will use Piazza as our class forum, and our primary mode of communication outside of class. All general inquiries must be made on Piazza. For group-specific questions or private questions, you can either email me or post a private question on Piazza.

Instructor:

Ashish Venkat (email: <lastname>@virginia.edu)
Office Hours: We 1-2pm @ Rice 312, or by appointment.

Teaching Assistant:

Arnabjyoti Kalita (email: mje6jj@virginia.edu)
Office Hours: Mo and Th 3-4pm @ Rice 442

Prerequisites

This is a graduate class -- we will be exploring advanced topics in computer architecture. Fourth year UVa undergraduate students interested to enroll should meet a minimum prerequisite requirement of an A- in the undergraduate computer architecture course CS 3130, CS 4330, ECE 4435 or equivalent. Graduate students who focus on other complimentary CS disciplines are encouraged to enroll, but are expected to pick up relevant architecture background as we progress through the course. This course will satisfy breadth requirements under the "Computer Systems" category.

Useful resources to pick up architecture background:

• Appendices A, B, and C of the required textbook (Note: we will briefly cover the material in Appendix C).
• Undergraduate textbook: Patterson and Hennessy, "Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface"

Grading

The grading breakdown for this course is:

• 5%: Class Participation
• 10%: Peer Review
• 15%: 3 homework assignments (including HW0)
• 15%: Adversarial Branch Prediction Championship (Sep 24 - Oct 20)
• 10%: In-class hacking workshop (Nov 17-19)
• 25%: Microbenchmarking Project (Sep 3-Dec 9)
• 20%: Final exam (on Dec 8 in class)

We will NOT use an absolute grading scale for this course. Your final letter grades will be assigned based on your overall performance, relative to the class average. In addition, you will receive an automatic level-up in your letter grade (e.g., A- to A) if you ace the final.

Assignments

There will be 3 homework assignments, an adversarial branch prediction championship, and a microbenchmarking project (due Dec 1). Each homework assignment will involve 3-5 exercise problems from the textbook. Links to assignments:

• HW0: Background Preparation [LaTeX version]
• HW1: Quantitative Analysis and Superscalars [LaTeX version]
• HW2: Advanced Processors and Caches [LaTeX version]

Guidelines and Policies:

• You may work in pairs for all assignments. Both students will receive the same grade. In addition, you will be given a chance to evaluate your partner for every assignment (worth 10% of the overall grade).
• All assignments are to be turned in electronically on Gradescope, at the beginning of the lecture (i.e., 9:30 am), unless otherwise noted.
• You are strongly encouraged to typeset your assignments, but not strictly required.
• Homework assignments are primarily intended for practice, rather than assessment. No single problem will have a significant impact on your final grade.
• Late assignments are not encouraged, but you're allowed two late days per assignment with penalty. Each late day will be assessed a flat 10% of the maximum score for that assignment as late penalty.

Schedule

Date	Topic	Assignment
Aug 27	Introduction, Motivation, and Course Logistics	HW0 out
Sep 1	Labor Day	-
Sep 3	Quantitative Analysis in Computer Architecture Reading: H&P Chapter 1.9 Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era, IEEE Computer, 2008 R.I.P. Geomean Speedup Use Equal-Work (Or Equal-Time) Harmonic Mean Speedup Instead, IEEE CAL, 2025	Microbenchmarking Project out
Sep 8	Technology Scaling and Dark Silicon Reading: Dark silicon and the end of multicore scaling, ISCA 2009	HW0 due
Sep 10	Instruction Set Architecture Reading: Harnessing ISA Diversity: Design of a Heterogeneous-ISA Chip Multiprocessor, ISCA 2014 The Impact of ISAs on Performance, ISCA Workshop on Duplicating, Deconstructing, and Debunking, 2017	-
Sep 15	Pipelined Datapath and Control Reading: H&P Appendix C	HW1 out
Sep 17	Pipelining: Data and Control Hazards Reading: Chapter 3.1	-
Sep 22	Branch Prediction Reading: H&P Chapter 3.3 A study of branch prediction strategies, ISCA 1981	Project Checkpoint-1 due
Sep 24	More Speculative Execution and Spectre Reading: H&P Chapter 3.9 Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution, IEEE S&P 2019	Adversarial Branch Prediction Championship begins
Sep 29	Exposing and Exploiting ILP-1 Reading: Introducing the IA-64 Architecture, IEEE Micro 2000 The Design of the Microarchitecture of UltraSPARC-I, IEEE 1995 H&P Chapters 3.2 and 3.7	-
Oct 1	Exposing and Exploiting ILP-2 Reading: Introducing the IA-64 Architecture, IEEE Micro 2000 The Design of the Microarchitecture of UltraSPARC-I, IEEE 1995 H&P Chapters 3.4-3.5	-
Oct 6	OOO Processors: Scoreboarding and Tomasulo's Algorithm Reading: H&P Chapters 3.6 and 3.8	-
Oct 8	OOO Processors: Explicit Register Renaming and Memory Disambiguation Reading: The MIPS R10000 Superscalar Microprocessor, IEEE Micro 1996 Memory Dependence Prediction using Store Sets, ISCA 1998	HW1 due
Oct 13	Fall Reading Day	-
Oct 15	DARPA PI Meeting	-
Oct 20	OOO Processors: Scheduling Logic Reading: Select-Free Instruction Scheduling Logic, MICRO 2001 Matrix Scheduler Reloaded, ISCA 2007	Adversarial Branch Prediction Championship ends
Oct 22	Multithreading Architectures Reading: Chapter 2 from Multithreading Architecture, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture Exploiting Choice: Instruction Fetch and Issue on an Implementable Simultaneous Multithreading Processor, ISCA 1996	HW2 out
Oct 27	Case Study: Intel Processor Microarchitectures Reading: The Case for a Single-Chip Multiprocessor, ASPLOS 1996 Chapters 2.1.1-2.1.3 from Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual (old)	-
Nov 3	Heterogeneous Chip Multiprocessors Reading: Single-ISA Heterogeneous Multi-Core Architectures: The Potential for Processor Power Reduction, MICRO 2003 Composite-ISA Cores: Enabling Multi-ISA Heterogeneity Using a Single ISA, HPCA 2019 Chapters 2.2-2.3 from Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual (new)	Project Checkpoint-2 due
Nov 5	Cache Design and Performance Reading: A Case for Direct-Mapped Caches, IEEE Computer, 1988 A case for two-way skewed-associative caches, ISCA 1993	-
Nov 10	Cache Optimizations Reading: Improving Direct-Mapped Cache Performance by the Addition of a Small Fully-Associative Cache and Prefetch Buffers, ISCA 1990 Chapters 2 and 3 of A Primer on Hardware Prefetching, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture	-
Nov 12	Side-Channel Attacks Reading: Chapters 8.1-8.4 from Principles of Secure Processor Architecture Design Covert and Side Channels due to Processor Architecture, ACSAC 2006 Last-Level Cache Side-Channel Attacks are Practical, IEEE S&P 2015	-
Nov 17	In-Class Hacking Workshop: Day-1 Important Links: Starter Code Computing Resources and SSH access	HW2 due
Nov 19	In-Class Hacking Workshop: Day-2	-
Nov 26	Thanksgiving Break	-
Dec 1	Side-Channel Defenses Reading: Chapters 8.5-8.6 from Principles of Secure Processor Architecture Design New cache designs for thwarting software cache-based side channel attacks, ISCA 2007	-
Dec 3	Final Review Important Links: Practice Problems Solutions	-
Dec 8	Final Exam	-
Dec 9	-	Project Final Checkpoint due

Honor Code

I trust every student in this course to fully abide by the University's Honor Code and pledge to not commit academic fraud. You are allowed to discuss, collaborate, and brainstorm only with your partner, but not outside of your group. You're also allowed to use AI resources to work on your assignments, as long as you keep a detailed history of the prompts you used to help with your assignments. However, you're not allowed to plagiarize solutions/text from another student's assignment or from the internet. If you're using AI, the onus is on you to ensure that your submission is devoid of plagiarism. Cheating will be taken seriously and will be reported to the honor committee. All suspected honor violations will receive a failing grade (F) in the course regardless of any action taken by the Honor Committee.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the course Honor policy. If you believe you may have committed an Honor Offense, you may wish to file a Conscientious Retraction by calling the Honor Offices at (434) 924-7602. For your retraction to be considered valid, it must, among other things, be filed with the Honor Committee before you are aware that the act in question has come under suspicion by anyone. More information can be found here. Your Honor representatives can be found at this link

Learning Accommodations

Students with disabilities or learning needs
It is my goal to create a learning experience that is as accessible as possible. If you anticipate any issues related to the format, materials, or requirements of this course, please meet with me outside of class so we can explore potential options. Students with disabilities may also wish to work with the Student Disability Access Center (SDAC) to discuss a range of options to removing barriers in this course, including official accommodations. We are fortunate to have an SDAC advisor, Courtney MacMasters, physically located in Engineering. You may email her at cmacmasters@virginia.edu to schedule an appointment. For general questions please visit the SDAC website. If you have already been approved for accommodations through SDAC, please send me your accommodation letter and meet with me so we can develop an implementation plan together.

Religious accommodations
It is the University's long-standing policy and practice to reasonably accommodate students so that they do not experience an adverse academic consequence when sincerely held religious beliefs or observances conflict with academic requirements. Students who wish to request academic accommodation for a religious observance should submit their request in writing directly to me as far in advance as possible. Students who have questions or concerns about academic accommodations for religious observance or religious beliefs may contact the University’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights (EOCR) at UVAEOCR@virginia.edu or (434) 924-3200.

Harassment, Discrimination, and Interpersonal Violence
The University of Virginia is dedicated to providing a safe and equitable learning environment for all students. If you or someone you know has been affected by power-based personal violence, more information can be found on the UVA Sexual Violence website that describes reporting options and resources available.
The same resources and options for individuals who experience sexual misconduct are available for discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. UVA prohibits discrimination and harassment based on age, color, disability, family medical or genetic information, gender identity or expression, marital status, military status, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, pregnancy (including childbirth and related conditions), race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status. UVA policy also prohibits retaliation for reporting such behavior.
If you witness or are aware of someone who has experienced prohibited conduct, you are encouraged to submit a report to Just Report It or contact EOCR, the office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights.
If you would prefer to disclose such conduct to a confidential resource where what you share is not reported to the University, you can turn to Counseling & Psychological Services (“CAPS”) and Women’s Center Counseling Staff and Confidential Advocates (for students of all genders).
As your professor and as a person, know that I care about you and your well-being and stand ready to provide support and resources as I can. As a faculty member, I am a responsible employee, which means that I am required by University policy and by federal law to report certain kinds of conduct that you report to me to the University's Title IX Coordinator. The Title IX Coordinator's job is to ensure that the reporting student receives the resources and support that they need, while also determining whether further action is necessary to ensure survivor safety and the safety of the University community.

Absences, illnesses, and career development It is in the best interest of everyone in our community to keep the spread of infectious disease to a minimum. Please stay away from class if you are sick with a communicable illness. If this results in you missing a scheduled in-class activity such as the hacking workshop or an exam, please contact the course staff (the instructor and the TA) so we can schedule an alternate time for you to complete the missed work. In case of exams, please note that an alternate make-up exam will be provided, albeit with the same level of difficulty. As for class participation, you will still receive credit as long as you -- (1) do not miss more than 6 lectures, and (2) participate in at least half of the lectures you attend.

Support for your career development
Engaging in your career development is an important part of your student experience. For example, presenting at a research conference, attending an interview for a job or internship, or participating in an extern/shadowing experience are not only necessary steps on your path but are also invaluable lessons in and of themselves. I wish to encourage and support you in activities related to your career development. To that end, please notify me by email as far in advance as possible to arrange for appropriate accommodations.

Community and Identity
The Center for Connection (The Connect) is a dedicated student space within UVA Engineering that fosters academic success and personal growth. Through its programs and initiatives, The Connect helps students strengthen their engineering identity while providing resources to help them thrive during their studies and beyond. Our work centers on three key areas: student belonging and development, academic support, and community programming grounded in intentional, data-driven strategies. The Connect features an open study area, a flexible event space, and on-site staff who provide direct support and advising to students. It is part of the Office of Community, Opportunity, and Engagement.