IIT Guwahati invites applications for Free Online Course on Advanced Computer Architecture via NPTEL

IIT Guwahati has organised this course while keeping in mind the value of Computer Architecture to all. Applications and handheld devices play a major role in ensuring comfort in our day to day life. These applications run on handheld electronic gadgets with high-end microprocessor support. Modern CPU designers handle challenges imposed by these applications with cost-effective architectural enhancements.

According to IIT Guwahati, tis course provides a deeper insight into the design of high-end microprocessors that will support future applications.

Who can enrol in the course?

This is an Undergraduate computer science level course for BE/ME/MS/MSc/PhD students. But anyone can enrol in the course. The only prerequisite is you should have some exposure to the basic understanding of Computer Organisation and Architecture or Microprocessors. Moreover, you must take this course for jobs in Intel, AMD, IBM, Nvidia etc.

Timeline of the course

This Elective course has a duration of 8 weeks. It will start from 15 February 2021 and end on 09 April 2021. If you want the certificate, you have to give a proctored exam on 25 April 2021. The last date to enrol is 15 February 2020.

Who will teach this course?

Dr John Jose is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Guwahati, Assam since 2015. He completed his PhD degree in Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Madras in the field of computer architecture. He did his BTech degree from College of Engineering Adoor, Cochin University, Kerala. Also, he was a rank holder in MTech degree from the VIT. Further, he has guided over 8 M.Tech theses and is currently supervising 7 PhD thesis and 2 M.Tech theses. His area of interests is in on-chip interconnection networks, cache management techniques for multicore architectures, non-volatile memory techniques, disaggregated memory systems, fault-tolerant and secure NoC designs for large multicore systems.

What will the course teach?

This is an 8-week-long course. Here’s the itinerary for the course.

W1: Review of Basic Computer Organization, Performance Evaluation Methods, Introduction to RISC Instruction Pipeline, Instruction Pipeline and Performance.

W2: Pipeline Hazards and Analysis, Branch Prediction, MIPS Pipeline for Multi-Cycle Operations.

W3: Compiler Techniques to Explore Instruction Level Parallelism, Dynamic Scheduling with Tomasulo’s Algorithm and Speculative Execution.

W4: Advanced Pipelining and Superscalar Processors; also, Exploiting Data Level Parallelism: Vector and GPU Architectures, Architectural Simulation using gem5.

W5: Introduction to Cache Memory, Block Replacement Techniques and Write Strategy, Design Concepts in Cache Memory.

W6: Basic and Advanced Optimization Techniques in Cache Memory, Cache Optimization using gem5.

W7: Introduction to DRAM System, DRAM Controllers and Address Mapping, Secondary Storage Systems, Design Concepts in DRAM and Hard Disk.

W8: Tiled Chip Multicore Processors(TCMP), Routing Techniques in Network on Chip(NoC), NoC Router Microarchitecture. Further, in TCMP and NoC: Design and Analysis, Future Trends in Computer Architecture Research.

How to obtain a certificate from IIT Guwahati?

The course is free to enrol and learn. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the optional proctored exam. The fee for this exam is ₹ 1000. Also, the successful completion of the exam does not guarantee a certificate. To get a certificate, you need to get 25% from the assignments and 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100.

Final score = Average assignment score (>10/25) + Exam score (>30/75). If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will still not get the certificate even if the Final score > 40/100.

This printable certificate will carry the stamp from both NPTEL and IIT Guwahati. Further, you can enrol in the course here.