Announcement: Class Wide Announcements

[Guofeng]

Students can reply to the announcements with clarification questions.

[Guofeng]

As requested, I have put the book Computer Architecture (4th ED) in
Noble Science for reserve. Starting from tomorrow, you may borrow the
book up to 4 hours a time.

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

The first homework assignment has been posted in the assignments
section on the course web. It is due on Tuesday, Sept 25th. The
expected solutions are similar to the book case studies solutions. So,
we posted the sample solutions to the case studies of Chapter 1 on the
web as well (the link is right next to the HW1 specification).

Should you have any questions on the assignment, you can stop by
during my Wednesday's office hours or send emails to Dr.Gupta and me.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

Please send your full name, asu ID and preferred account name to me
via email. Besides, I posted some links in the announcement section of
the course page. Have a look at them and learn more about the
datacenter we visited today.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi class,

The requirements for project reports (phase I, phase II) have been
posted in the Course Description section.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

The take-home midterm questions have been announced on the course
website (within assignment session). It is due on Tuesday, Oct 16th.
Let us know if you have any questions. Enjoy the questions.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Payal...@asu.edu]

Hello Guofeng,

I am still confused with the requirements of term paper and project. I
will appreciate if you can explain me exactly what we are supposed to
do.
Many of the topics that we go through in class are new for me so I
don't have any predetermined area of interest in which I would like to
work.
I have gone through different topics/papers to decide a specific area.
The technical papers describe some issues in related areas and their
probable solutions/observations obtained by authors. Some of the
papers also state issues that the authors could not resolve or they
left it on others to think about possibilities.
So my question is, do we have to pick a paper for presentation,
understand and describe an unsolved issue in the particular paper and
research on that issue to find out possible solutions? Please correct
me if I misunderstood.

Also, I will appreciate if we can be informed about the class
cancellation in advance through email (whenever it is possible to do
so) so that I can save my 30 miles one-way drive to Tempe campus.

Thank you for your time and help.

Sincerely,
Payal Soni

[Guofeng]

Hi,

The idea of term projects is (always) to focus on a particular area
that is related to the topics of the class and dig deeper rather than
wider. To find a project topic is a refinement process. You need to
first have some rough idea, then refine it, and at the end determine
the topic and work on it. Dr. Gupta did a survey on the ideas last
week in the class (the results were posted on the website) and also
gave comments to some of them.

The reading list is provided to help students identify some active
areas of computer architecture and enhance the understanding. If, from
a particular paper, you can find a problem that is interesting to you
and is appropriate as a project topic, that is fine too.

At the same time, you are required to identify a paper from the list
and present it to the class. The paper should be related to your term
project. If you find a paper outside the list that is better, you can
present that one too with Dr. Gupta's permission.

I hope I answered your question. Let me know if you have further
questions or you can post them here.

I am very sorry for your wasted trip. I didn't realize an email
announcement was needed because, as far as I knew, Dr. Gupta announced
the cancellation twice last week. I will post all important
announcements via the discussion group. Thanks for pointing that out.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Payal...@asu.edu]

Hello Guofeng,

Thank you so much for the explanation. It helped me understand the
underlined idea behind the project much better.

My sincere apologies for the misunderstanding about today's class. I
thought the class cancellation as announced by Dr.Gupta last week was
only for Tuesday's class and not for today.

Sincerely,
Payal Soni

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

Please send me the reference to the paper you chose to present (it was
returned to you with the project proposal, so I don't have it) and do
so before the midnight of Saturday, Oct 20th. You can attach the dates
when you will not be able to do presentation, critics and so on, if
any. The email should have a subject like "cse520 paper presentation:
your name".

>From the week of Oct 29th, we will start paper presentation. We will
arrange 2 presentations per class. I will announce the presentation
schedule as well as the assignments of critics and summary next week.
Let me know if you have questions. Thanks.

Regards,
Guofeng

On Aug 25, 11:12 am, Guofeng <guofeng.d...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

I have received 9 presentation references so far through email. If you
haven't sent yours to me, please do so before Tuesday's (tomorrow)
night. And I will announce the schedule on the website as well as
here. It might be difficult to modify the schedule once it is
announced. Thanks.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

I have posted the paper presentation schedule. Please let me know ASAP
if there is any problem.

http://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/presentation.html

We will have 2 presentations per class. Each presenter will have 25
minutes to present the paper, including brief background, motivation,
state-of-the-art, novel approaches, verification, and conclusion.
There will be 5 minutes Q&A for each presentation. I will create a
thread for each paper in the discussion space, where students are
encouraged to discuss technical problems. Participation in discussion
by students will be evaluated. To further encourage students to ready
and study the paper, we will quizzes on them.

Here are the requirements for presenter, critics and the one who
summarizes the paper:

* Presenters are required to submit their presentation slides to me
via email a day before the presentation. I will upload the slides to
the course web page, so you don't need to worry about how to carry
them.

* The 3 critics should submit their critique of the presentation as
well as the paper to me via email before the first class after the
presentation. The latter will be posted on the course web. For
example, the critique of the paper presented on Tuesday class is due
before the Thursday class.

* The summary, which is due before the second class after the
presentation, should be sent to me via email. For example, the summary
of the paper presented on Tuesday is due before the following Tuesday
class. The summary should also include the discussion on google
group.

Let's discuss it here if you have questions or raise them in class.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

In my previous email, I mentioned things to consider when presenting a
technical paper, such as background, motivation,
state-of-the-art, novel approaches, verification, and conclusion. That
is a very generic guideline.

Dr. Gupta narrowed them down to the following elements:

1. Contributions of the paper
2. Key ideas - details and Key results
3. How does the paper relate to the class
4. How does the paper relate to the project

Please make sure that you address them sufficiently.

I briefly reiterrate the deadlines and please refer to the previous
email for details:

1. Presentation slides: 1 day before presentation
2. Critiques: 1 class after presentation
3. Summary: 2 classes after presentation

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

I have posted the grades of programming assignment 1 at
http://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/score.htm. I have also posted another
test case, test_in_5, which can be found on the course web, for
grading purposes. Let me know if you have any question.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

There have been some updates on the presentation schedule since last
week. I have been trying to make the updated schedule work. Now, each
student is assigned a slot for summarizing a paper/presentation. But
some of you lost one slot or 2 for critiques because of cancelled
presentations.

So, those who were affected, please have a look at the updated
schedule (at http://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/presentation.html) and
send me email with your preference of additional critique slots. Make
sure that you will criticize at least 3 paper/presentations. Besides
your interests, I urge you to consider the ones that will not be
sufficiently criticized first. But I will accept the 4th critic for a
paper/presentation.

Some of you may be interested in getting bonus for criticizing papers.
Please as well send me your preference.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

I think I need to repeat the following 2 announcement.

First, please make sure that you submit critiques for presentations to
me on time.

Second, each student has to critique at least 3 papers, excluding the
summary. If you lost some of slots due to cancelled presentations,
please send me your preference of additional critiques.

Regards,
Guofeng

On Nov 8, 1:37 pm, Guofeng <guofeng.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> There have been some updates on the presentation schedule since last
> week. I have been trying to make the updated schedule work. Now, each
> student is assigned a slot for summarizing a paper/presentation. But
> some of you lost one slot or 2 for critiques because of cancelled
> presentations.
>
> So, those who were affected, please have a look at the updated

> schedule (athttp://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/presentation.html) and

[Guofeng]

Hi class,

Here are some announcements.

First, on Tuesday, Nov 27th, we arranged 3 presentations. So please
come to the class 15 minutes earlier, i.e., at 3PM.

Second, please be prepared for your project presentation. We will do
project presentation on Thursday, Nov 29th and Tue, Dec 4th. Each of
the 11 groups will have 10 to 12 minutes for presentation and 3 to 5
minutes for Q&A. Please send me TWO preferences of presentation slots
including date and slot number (1 to 6).

*** presentation slides due: the end of Wednesday, Nov 28th.
*** phase III report due: at the beginning of Tuesday's (Dec 4th)
class.

Third, you are required to be present in the class at the final exam
time, i.e., 2:40-4:30PM, Tuesday, Dec 11st.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving.

I have posted the schedule of project presentation at
http://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/projectpresentation.html. As
announced before, the presentation slides are due by the end of
Wednesday, Nov 28th. Each group will have 12 minutes to present the
project and 3 minutes to answer questions.

Let me know if you have any questions.

As a kind reminder, please come 15 minutes earlier to Tuesday's class,
when we will have 3 paper presentations.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Sugan Vinayagam]

HI Guofeng,

We have our presentation in google docs. Here is the link.

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddf852f5_67ckxrb9&skipauth=true

We have also attached the pdf version for your reference.

Thanks,
Sugan.
Ashay.

[Guofeng]

Hi folks,

Up to now, you should have submitted all the critiques of the
presentations (not paper) that were assigned to you. If you haven't
done so, please submit it to me by the end of Saturday, Dec 1st. No
critiques will be accepted after the new due time.

Regards,
Guofeng

On Nov 26, 10:55 am, Guofeng <guofeng.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Class,
>
> I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving.
>

> I have posted the schedule of project presentation athttp://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/projectpresentation.html. As

[Sushma Myneni]

Aarul,

 

In your project presentation regarding the simulation of FFT in cell processor, you have mentioned that computation is taking far larger time than dma transfer time. While using double buffering technique to extract maximum performance of the cell processor, I think we need to try to make computation time = dma transfer time. Is this not true? Will we not get maximum performance of the FFT implementation if we try this way?

 

Thankyou,

Sushma

[Aarul Jain]

Thanks for asking the question.

 

From my simulations I have observed is that DMA of Cell is extremely fast.

 

So for low order ffts, where we can fit all the N input values in the local store the best implementation(maximum performance) is to get the entire data in one go and let SPE work on it and in the end it writes back. Using double buffer for low-order FFTs will not give large performance gains. Rather it will reduce the maximum size of FFT I can compute in one go.

 

For large order ffts, where a SPE cannot complete entire FFT operation as the entire set of input data cannot be stored in local store... double buffering technique might come in handy.

From my simulations, I can say that the order of FFT for such a case where DMA transfer time = FFT compute time will be very-very large.

 

Finally, performance depends upon the compute-intensity/memory-intensity of the application. For eg:, in my case the calculation of exponentials is done within the code rather than a look-up table in memory. So it is many factors more compute-intensive than memory-intensive.

 

Here are two threads from alphworks forum that I found quite intresting to read related to performance of cell:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=14014966&#14014966

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=160216

 

Let me know if you have any more questions

Thanks and regards

-Aarul

 

 

Graduate Student, EE Dept.
Arizona State University, Tempe, US
Ph: 480-278-9230

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

You should have received a summary of critiques for your paper
presentation. We hope you get some valuable feedback, which may help
in improving your presentation skills.

In light of tight schedule of some students, we extend the deadline of
final project reports to the final exam time, which is 2:40-4:30PM,
Tuesday, Dec 11st. Bring a hard copy of your report to the class.

Good luck with your finals and feel free to ask if you have any
questions.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Guofeng]

Hi Class,

The final has been posted and you can find it in the Assignment
section of the website. Please note that you are required to submit
both hard- and soft-copies. Enjoy the questions and feel free to send
us any questions you have.

In addition to the hard copy of your final project report, please send
me a soft-copy of the report via email.

We appreciate your cooperation through the semester. Marry Christmas
and happy holidays. Have a wonderful winter break.

Regards,
Guofeng

[Sugan Vinayagam]

Hi Guofeng,

I remember Dr.Sandeep saying in the last class that the partial grades have been posted. But i could not find in the course website except for this link( http://impact.asu.edu/cse520sp07/score.pdf) which is also not working.

Can you please upload the scores that we have got so far.

Thanks,
Sugan.

[Guofeng (Griffin) Deng]

Here is the link http://impact.asu.edu/cse520fa07/score.htm

Regards,
Guofeng