Computer System Design: Concepts of Modern Microprocessors
Offered By: Chalmers University of Technology via edX
Course Description
Overview
Give your career a boost by mastering the advanced concepts underpinning the design of multicore-based computers. This professional certificate program covers design principles governing modern microprocessors, such as pipelining, cache memories, parallelism, prefetching, and cache coherency. Applying these concepts is critical when developing competitive computerized products. Take, for instance, a smartphone with limited battery capacity. Improved functionality can lead to significantly shorter operation time between battery charges, thus utilizing the already limited resources of a smartphone far more efficiently.
The target audience for this program is practicing software and hardware engineers in need of a deep understanding of performance engineering. This program is also well suited for students who want to specialize in computer engineering and get a deep understanding of the working of modern computers.
This program is derived from both undergraduate and advanced graduate courses in computer system design. It starts on a basic level and then gradually introduces more advanced concepts. The program offers a unique opportunity to learn about computer systems on a machine and assembly language level.
The courses are given by Per Stenström, a world-renowned research leader in computer architecture. He is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE and member of three academies (Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, The European Academy, and the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering Science). He has co-authored around 200 publications and 20 patents and has co-founded a few high-tech startup companies.
By the end of this program, you will have a deep understanding in the design of future multicore-based computers and the impact on energy efficiency and program execution time.
Syllabus
Course 1: Computer Systems Design for Energy Efficiency
Learn how to design modern computers to improve the speed, performance and energy efficiency of your programs.
Course 2: Computer System Design: Advanced Concepts of Modern Microprocessors
Learn about advanced computer design concepts, including how to make modern multicore-based computers both fast and energy efficient.
Courses
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In order to be competitive in the computer science field, it’s imperative to understand the basic building blocks of a modern computer and how they directly impact the speed and efficiency of a program. Whether you work with embedded systems, mobile computer-based systems, or cloud systems, performance and energy efficiency are key drivers of usability and competitiveness of computerized products.
In this course, you will learn how to design modern multicore-based computers, and how the design choices you make affect performance and energy consumption. You will explore design principles governing modern microprocessors, such as pipelining and cache memories, as well as methods for determining the impact of your design on execution time and energy efficiency.
These skills can make a difference for practicing engineers for the purpose of building highly competitive products. Take, for instance, a smartphone with limited battery capacity. By adding value to end users through new or improved functionality, this can lead to significantly shorter operation time between battery charges, thus utilizing the already limited resources of a smartphone far more efficiently.
With this skillset, you can become an expert in computer system performance and energy efficiency - knowledge that is in high demand when designing computerized embedded products. With trends towards IoT (Internet of Things), autonomous systems and mobile computers, such a skillset will be critical in a career in systems engineering.
This course is derived from a Chalmers senior undergraduate course in computer system design.
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In this computer science course, you will learn advanced concepts underpinning the design of today’s multicore-based computers. Additionally, you will learn how design decisions affect energy efficiency and performance.
Overall, topics include fundamentals on exploiting parallelism among instructions such as out-of-order execution, branch prediction, exception handling and advanced concepts of memory systems including prefetching and cache coherency. These concepts are fundamental for future computer systems to maximize compute efficiency.
You will also engage with a community of learners with similar interests to share knowledge.
The course is derived from Chalmers’s advanced graduate course in computer architecture. Prospective students should have a foundation in basic computer design, as offered by, for example, in “Computer System Design - Improving Energy Efficiency and Performance.“
Taught by
Per Stenström
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