This is a specialized course on memory hierarchy design aspects of Computer Architecture. 

And is open for all the students who have undertaken CS204: Computer Architecture or a similar course. The course will dive into many topics pertaining to the current state-of-the art memory design challenges related to performance, fairness, energy/power security vulnerabilities. The required basics would be revised.

This course aims to make students understand:

1. State of the art optimizations at Cache, Memory and Storage.

2. Working of non-volatile memories and their design challenges.

3. Working of timing-, side- and covert-channel attacks, denial-of-service attacks at memory.

1. Module 0: Introduction

   • Overview of the memory hierarchy in current processors

   • Revisiting the memory wall

   • Non-volatile memories

   • Memory based security attacks and defenses

2. Module 1: Cache optimizations considering Multi-core processors

   • Replacement policy, fairness, prefetching, etc.,

   • Partitioning (Static/Dynamic)

   • Design issues with Non-volatile memories

3. Module 2: Memory optimizations

   • Issues with DRAM

   • Tiered memory design

   • Heterogenous memory design

   • Row-hammer attack

4. Module 3: Storage architecture

   • Design of enterprise storage - Garbage collection, DRAM cache design, etc.,

   • Ransomware attack

*Few changes in the content and/or flow can be expected.

1. Contents of the course will be primarily from fundamental/high-impact research papers.

Reference books:

1. Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by David A Patterson, John L Hennessy, 5th edition.

2. Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk by Bruce Jacob, Spencer Ng and David Wang, 2007.

3. Books from Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture

• • TBA

• TBA