Datorteknik och datornät 2003-10-30 Case Study Topics 1. General architecture - Intel 486. - To study the main features of the Intel 486 architecture. J. H. Crawford, The i486 CPU: Executing Instructions in One Clock Cycle, IEEE Micro, February 1990. i486 Microprocessor Programmer s Reference Manual, Intel Corp. 1990. 2. RISC processor - SPARC. - To find out the typical characteristics of a RISC machine, using SPARC as an example. R. B. Garner, SPARC Scalable Processor Architecture, Sun Technology, Summer 1988. E. W. Brown, Implementing Sparc in ECL, IEEE Micro, February 1990. 3. CISC processors - Pentium. - To find out the typical characteristics of a CISC machine, using Pentium as an example. http://developer.intel.com/design/pentium/index.htm. D. Anderson and T. Shanley, Pentium Processor System Architecture, Richardson TX: Mindshare Press, 1993. 4. Multi-layer and multiple Caches. - To study the basic concept of multi-layer and multiple caches, and to find out the main advantages of using such caches? The text book by Stallings and information available via the web. 5. Instruction pipelines. - To study and compare several pipeline implementations of the modern microprocessors, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches. The text book by Stallings and information available via the web. 6. Java Virtual Machine - To investigate the main architectural features of the Java virtual machine. J. Meyer and T. Downing, Java Virtual Machine, O Reilly, 1997. http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/meyer/jvmref/ref-java.html. - 1 -
7. T9000 Transputer Architecture. - To investigate the Transputers, which are high performance microprocessors developed to support parallel processing through on-chip hardware. The T9000 Transputer, Products Overview, Manual, SGS-Thomson, Inmos 1991. http://vl.fmnet.info/transputer/ 8. Multiprocessor - the Alliant system. - To study typical features of a multiprocessor computer, using Alliant as an example. Suggested reference: D. Tabak, Multiprocessors, Chapter 7, Detail Example- The Alliant System, Prentice-Hall International Editions, 1990. 9. Vad är spam och kan man få stopp på det? - Utred vad spam är och olika tekniska lösningar för att begränsa spamflödet. 10. Hur fungerar "peer-to-peer"? - Utred hur något av de kända peer-to-peer-nätverken (t.ex. Gnutella) fungerar på protokollnivån. 11. GigaSunet - Sveriges universitet och högskolor är anslutna till varandra och Internet via SUNET, vår egen internetleverantör. Den aktuella generationen av detta nät kallas GigaSunet. Tag reda på hur det nätet är uppbyggt och knyt an till teorimaterialet i kursen. 12. Verisigns vilda wildcardäventyr - Verisign är företaget som sköter registeringen av domäner under.com och.net. Under hösten har det varit en del bråk om den tjänst (SiteFinder) som de införde och sedan fick stänga av igen efter massiv kritik från nättekniker på många håll. Utred vad detta handlade om! 13. Traceroute - Sätt er noga in i hur verktyget "traceroute" fungerar, och demonstrera hur det kan användas för att se hur Internet hänger ihop och vilken väg trafiken tar. 14. NAT - Hemmabrandväggar, Windows-datorer som kör "connection sharing" med flera klara av att "gömma" flera datorer med separata interna IP-adresser bakom en ena publik IPadress. Hur går det till? Vilka för- och nackdelar finns det med att använda sådan teknik? 15. Topics of your own choice - Other topics can be discussed with Zebo in the area of computer architecture and with Kent in the area of computer network. - 2 -
Guidelines for the Case Study Report The report should concentrate on the main, and relatively new, ideas introduced by the architecture or computer network issues studied. It is expected that you will discuss different tradeoffs made by the designers to create a high-performance and cost effective architecture or network solution. You should discuss also the main architectural or network concepts used by the designers and explain them. The contents of the report can vary with different assignments but the following list will give you some hints especially for the studies of architectures: Analyze the instruction execution cycle and point out the main performance/cost trade-offs. For example, you can discuss pipelining, superscalar and multiprocessing and its implementation as well as problems such as instruction ordering for high-performance, memory bandwidth, etc. Look at some special purpose instructions (graphics, vector, floating-point, etc.) for the specific architecture, and discuss their applications as well as performances. Discuss the new solutions used in the architecture and explain why they were introduced (for example, for performance, cost, special application). Discuss how the available technology influence a given architecture. For example, the VLSI technology has made it possible to put more functionality on a chip. Discuss also how technology will influence future developments. Describe the expected application area of the architecture. The length of the report can be flexible, depending on the studies. Nevertheless try to have it between 10-15 pages, if possible, in the same style, such as font size and spacing, as this page. - 3 -
Case Study Groups: No. Topic Contact person & e-mail Members Presentation Date Grade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10-4 -
Case Study Groups: No. Topic Contact person & e-mail Members Presentation Date Grade 11 12 13 14 15 16-5 -