CSC/ECE 506 Fall 2007

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Peer-reviewed Assignment 1

Important Dates

• 08/31/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 Selection
• 09/05/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 Submission
• 09/07/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 First feedback
• 09/10/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 Resubmission
• 09/12/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 Final review
• 09/14/2007 Peer-reviewed 1 Review of review

Topics

• Sections 1.1 and 1.1.2
  • Update performance trends in multiprocessors.

• Section 1.1.1, first half: Scientific/engineering application trends
  • What characterizes present-day applications?
  • How much memory, processor time, etc.?
  • How high is the speedup?

• Section 1.1.1, second half: Commercial application trends
  • What characterizes present-day applications?
  • How much memory, processor time, etc.?
  • How high is the speedup?

• Section 1.1.3: Architectural trends
  • How have architectures changed in the past 10 years?
  • Update Figs. 1.8 and 1.9 with new points, for 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007.

Architectural Trends- This summary give a detail observation of architectural trends. It also highlights the concepts of VLIW(Very Long Instruction Word), Multi-threading, Multi-core CPUs, and Speculative Execution. It also updates Figs. 1.8 and 1.9 with new points, for 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007.

• Section 1.1.4: Supercomputers
  • Compare current supercomputers with those of 10 yrs. ago.
  • Update Figures 1.10 to 1.12 with new data points. For 1.12, consult top500.org.

Supercomputers- This summary give a detail description of the definition of what a supercomputer is, the evolution of the supercomputer's architecture and performance, and explores the main metric (LINPACK Benchmark Suite) for evaluating the effectiveness of supercomputers. It also takes a look at the most dominant supercomputers of the last 10 years.

• Sections 1.2.1 and 1.2.4: Communication architecture
  • Trends in last 10 years.
  • How has data parallelism found its way into shared-memory and message-passing machines? An early example would be MMX.
  • Would you change the number of layers in Fig. 1.13?

• Section 1.2.2: Shared address space
  • Any changes in the organization of address spaces in the last 10 years?
  • Are the interconnection structures different in new computers now than they were 10 years ago?
  • What is the size and capacity of current SMPs?
  • How have supercomputers evolved since the Cray T3E?

• Section 1.2.3: Message passing
  • Are blade servers an extension of message passing?
  • How have blade architectures evolved over the past 10 years?

Message Passing This summary highlights the typical structure of message passing machines, advantages of using message passing and gives a detailed introduction of what message passing is.

• Section 1.2.5: Trends in vector processing and array processing.
  • New machines have recently been announced. Why will this be an important architectural dimension in the coming years?

• Section 1.2.6
  • New developments in dataflow and systolic architectures, if any.
  • Or if not, why are these styles not evolving with time?

Dataflow and Systolic Architectures- This summary give a detail description of the new developments in dataflow and systolic architectures. It even explores why systolic architecture has not truly evolved with time (to the extent of other architectures)

the definition of what a supercomputer is, the evolution of the supercomputer's architecture and performance, and explores the main metric (LINPACK Benchmark Suite) for evaluating the effectiveness of supercomputers. It also takes a look at the most dominant supercomputers of the last 10 years.

• Sections 1.3.1 and 1.3.2: Communication and programming model
  • How have reordering strategies evolved to accommodate larger multicomputers?
  • Have new kinds of synchronization operations been developed?
  • I doubt that other topics covered in these sections have changed much, but do check.

• Sections 1.3.3 and 1.3.4: Most changes here are probably related to performance metrics.
  • Cite other models for measuring artifacts such as data-transfer time, overhead, occupancy, and communication cost. Focus on the models that are most useful in practice.