1. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 1 WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s Computer Hardware Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Waterloo

2. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 2 Outline Introduction to computer hardware Main specializations Courses available

3. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 3 What is a Computer Hardware? Digital hardware spans software and VSLI Includes: –Distributed systems –Embedded systems –CAD tools –Discrete control –Cryptography –Compression –Computer architecture –IP blocks

4. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 4 Digital Hardware and VLSI VLSI advances provided exponential increases in performance Analog effects are now visible in the digital domain: –Power –Wire delays –Cross talk How can we do analog-aware digital design?

5. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 5 Digital Hardware and Software Increases in transistor counts allow more parallelism in hardware Exposing this concurrency to software allows software to improve performance at the cost of increased complexity What is the right hardware/software interface? Combinations of configurable and fixed hardware on a single chip blurs the distinction between hardware and software How do we design and validate these complex systems?

6. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 6 Course Summary 4A4B ECE 429 Computer Architecture ECE 423 Embedded Computer Systems - starting W2014

7. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 7 Which Courses to Take? 4A: ECE 429 Computer Architecture Organization and performance of conventional uniprocessors, pipelined processors, parallel processors and multiprocessors; memory and cache structures; multiprocessor algorithms, cache coherence and synchronization techniques; special-purpose architectures. 4B: ECE 423 Embedded Computer Systems (starting W2014) Specification and design of embedded systems, specification languages, hardware/software co-design, performance estimation, co-simulation, verification, validation, embedded architectures, processor architectures and software synthesis, system-on-a-chip paradigm, retargetable code generation and optimization, verification and validation, environmental issues and considerations.

8. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 8 Pre-Enrolment Remember that you must pre-enrol in –October for 4A courses –June for 4B courses Courses with fewer than 20 students will be cancelled!

9. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 9 Summary Introduction to computer hardware Digital hardware spans software and VLSI Courses available: –One in 4A and one in 4B

10. WATERLOO ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 20s: Computer Hardware 10 Copyright and Disclaimer These slides are Copyright © 2010 by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Waterloo. All rights reserved. No warranty is given that any information in these slides is correct