最近终于完成了CS61C (fa20)，浅写个总结。
英文是从我的repo直接抄来的
课程结构
Centered on several great ideas in computer architecture. Specifically,
The first half of the course teaches what’s called “the old school machine structures”.
High level language program - C [lec3-6]
Assembly language program - RISC-V [lec7-13]
Machine Language - still RISC-V, but without pseudo instructions [lec7-13]
Hardware architecture description - block diagrams, datapaths, cache, pipelining, virtual mem, etc. [lec17-27]
Logic circuit description [lec14-16]
Basically, that’s everything from the top – the programmer-friendly high level language C–, to the bottom arch – circuits, logic gates, and transistors–.
In terms of actual sequence, it’s like top -> middle, then bottom -> middle, and finally the two lines meet at around project3 (DIY a CPU datapath).
The second half teaches the new-school structures, which include more recent ideas of parallelism / high performance programming that companies hardware improvements.
data-level parallelism - SIMD [lec32], MapReduce, Spark, etc. [lec36]
thread-level parallelism - threads, cache coherency, OpenMP, etc. [lec33-35]
dependability [lec38]
Lab总结
跳过了几个没有成功setup的lab。
- Lab1 Number Rep, C and CGDB: familiarize you with c and debugging tools
- Lab2 Advanced C: bit manipulations, memory allocation, and pointers in C
- Lab3 RISCV Assembly: ask u to figure out how simple C programs work on a lower level and write RISC-V assembly code
- Lab4 RISCV Functions, Pointers: still RISC-V practices, asking you to modify code to make the program work
- Lab5 Logisim: ~ build logic gates and practise with combinational logic
- Lab7 Caches: back to RISC-V, implement and optimize matrix-related functions to understand how cache works. This lab is valuable as it touches on one way to squeeze out performance.
- Lab8 OS, I/O, DMA, Disks, Networking & Virtual Memory: ~ play with a virtual memory simulator to understand how it works
- Lab9 SIMD Instructions: ~ work on single instruction multiple data (SIMD) – write C functions and improve their performance with x86 intrinsics. It’s like inserting assembly code into C code. (Note that ARM users unfortunately would have to use ARM NEON intrin to be able to compile the programs.)
- Lab10 Thread Level Parallelism: have you experience parallel programing with C + OpenMP. Ask you to apply parallelism to the implementation of sum vector and dot product C funcs.
后记
课如其名，这门课最重要的是几个great ideas in computer architecture，是一层一层往下理解计算机的工作原理，其次才是掌握具体的实现细节（不是说不重要，是ideas > implementation）。但可能是因为课程设定是体系结构入门+老师都有ee背景，感觉好多地方通识性质很强，且是从硬件设计角度切入的。于是之后还打算去补一下15-213的csapp。
关于笔记：本来在考虑整理笔记，但想了下61c里对我比较重要的知识都没办法系统性整理，或者说意义不太大，理由同上。比如C和RISC-V的语法没必要全部照抄一遍，OS部分大多是概念，datapath的部分很多又已经给了discussion notes，最后的并行也只教了冰山一角。
其他注意事项：20fa的版本里Bora负责的部分听起来稍吃力一些，但两位老师讲得都还是很好的。以及，m芯片带来了少许麻烦，中间碰到需要用x86指令相关库的时候还得被迫学一遍arm的对应指令（btw cgpt翻译是可行的）。
进度
计划30个自然日内完成——顺利实现，虽然实际span将近两个月。
- 【0611】setup, lab00
- 【0615】lec1&2
- 【0616】lec3
- 【0617】lec4
- 【0625】lec5, lab01
- 【0626】lec6
- 【0627】proj1A
- 【0702/03】proj1 Fin
- 【0704】K&Rch1-2
- 【0705】lec7+8.1, lab2
- 【0706】disc2
- 【0715】lec8-10
- 【0716】lab3
- 【0719】disc3, disc4
- 【0724】proj2 partA 50%
- 【0725】proj2 partA fin
- 【0801】lec11-13
- 【0802】disc5, lab4, lec14-15
- 【0803】lecs16+SDS State Logic handouts, lec17
- 【0804】lab5, lec 18-19
- 【0805】lec20-27 (fin CPU Pipelining Caches), disc6-8
- 【0806】disc9, lab7, lec28-2931 (fin OS VMi)
- 【0807】lec30-31(VMii I/O), disc10, lab8, disc11
- 【0808】lec32-35 (SIMD/MIMD, Parallelism), lec36-38 (MapReduce, WSC, RAID)
- 【0809】disc12, lab9, lab10, disc13-14
- 【skipped due to compatibility probs】proj4, proj3, lab6, lab11
最后修改于 2023-08-11