
Computer Architecture – ETH Zürich – Fall 2017 - matt_d
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi9OhoVQBXYFIZywZXCPl4M_
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aladinator
I took the course this year. Prof Mutlu is a fantastic teacher, I learned a
lot but the course was a lot of effort, especially the labs. Nevertheless,
best course I took at ETH so far.

Course material:
[https://safari.ethz.ch/farm/architecture_fs17/doku.php?id=st...](https://safari.ethz.ch/farm/architecture_fs17/doku.php?id=start)

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b3h3moth
I would like to point your attention to:

"From NAND to Tetris. Building a Modern Computer From First Principles"

[http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/)

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Annatar
Ah, ETH. Still among the top ten elite computer science universities in the
world. Nice to see it's getting some exposure on "Hacker News".

I'm a technical architect by trade and profession, this is how I earn my
living. Students have apprenticed under me over the years. This is not how I
would approach teaching computer architecture. He's teaching basic principles.
In my view, architecting systems and software is an advanced topic, in the
600-700 difficulty range. The material he's teaching is in the 100 range. It's
very theoretical, and I firmly believe that teaching architecture needs to be
a very practical, hands-on experience, and that the prerequisite is about 20
years of professional system engineering experience first: technical
implementation experience, systems experience, integration and testing
experience in the area of small and large scale systems. System, network, and
database development and administration. Digital logic circuit design.
Requirements gathering, documentation. Those would be the prerequisites for
teaching someone to become an architect in the context of computer science.

What he's teaching is introduction to computing. The course is a misnomer.
Computer architecture is about designing systems, not operation of the system.

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klrr
I think this course is about Computer Architecture as in Computer
Organization, ie a course about the layer between digital circuits and
operating systems. You probably confuse the term with Software Architecture.

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bogomipz
I have watched many of these and I have to say Onur Mutlu is excellent. I have
watched his lectures from CMU as well ETH. It must be fantastic attend these
in person.

I am curious does anyone more about him and his background?

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deepnotderp
His PhD thesis was Runahead execution IIRC.

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smnscu
[https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/pub/mutlu_hpca03.pdf](https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/pub/mutlu_hpca03.pdf)

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deepnotderp
So stoked this is on HN's front page. Mutlu's materials* were very helpful
when I was getting started with computer architecture. Highly recommend this!

*I think he was at CMU back then though.

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coygui
I think the pass rate for such course is very low, 50%-ish. I once took a
similar course but was about mechanical architecture. Pass rate was 50-60-ish.
I spent whole summer studying it and only got 4.75... But indeed, I learned a
lot.

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myrion
For clarification for non-Swiss people: Grades in Switzerland go 1-6, with 6
being the best, 4 being passing and 1 being the worst grade. A 4.75, typically
rounded to a 5, is therefore a decent, though not amazing grade.

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eXpl0it3r
For ETH it's getting close to amazing, as you'll pretty much never reach a 6.

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m_mueller
Depends. At least for EE there's a big difference between the courses that are
supposed to filter the students (usually years 1 and 2) and those that don't.
For the latter a high grade like 5.75 or even 6 was doable, for the former the
time limit and amount of material to study is so harsh that I wouldn't even
know where to start to achieve that.

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mem0r1
The undergraduate courses in Theoretical physics at the ETH are done with
books (e.g. Goldstein: Classical Mechanics, Jackson: Eletrodynamics...) which
are PhD Level in the US.

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orbifold
I think that is true for most German speaking universities. I know for a fact
that both Unis in Munich and Heidelberg basically teach PhD level courses in
Undergrad in the sense that there is no Graduate Electrodynamics and
Undergraduate Electrodynsmics just one experimental and one theoretical course
in which Jackson is typically one of the references, the same is true for QM
etc

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eXpl0it3r
Nice to see some ETH material here!

Are these slides recorded from the wall or why do they have that "special"
look? Feels like some lecture notes from the early 2000.

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dtornabene
There are 382 papers if you include the "suggested" in the readings section of
this course. Genuinely curious how many students actually read.

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aladinator
Reviewing some of the papers was required as part of the homework assignments.
That included about 15 of the most important papers. Additionally I read about
20 more to understand some of the ideas a bit better, but the list is very
exhaustive and serves more as a pointer to supplemental material for those
interested.

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dtornabene
Thank you! I wasn't being snarky if that wasn't clear, I assumed it was
something along those lines. I was excited to see/have access to a curated
list of work on architecture that exhaustive, having never studied it in
university.

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0xFFC
It seems lecture 27 is not available. Can anybody check that out?

Second question, is this graduate level or undergraduate?

P.S. Thank you so much for providing this.

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beefhash
> Second question, is this graduate level or undergraduate?

The course can be taken as part of a master's degree[1].

[1]
[http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheit.vie...](http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheit.view?semkez=2017W&ansicht=STUDPLANINFO&lerneinheitId=119244&lang=en)

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0xFFC
Thank you so much, this is what I looking for ;)

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ThePadawan
Notably, this is a more advanced view compared to the obligatory course taught
during the Bachelor's degree called Systems Programming and Computer
Architecture
([http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheit.vie...](http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/lerneinheit.view?lerneinheitId=116446&semkez=2017W&ansicht=KATALOGDATEN&lang=en)).

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zerr
Is 2.5 hours per lecture a norm there?

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Crazywater
No, that's quite a long one. Usually the slots are 45min plus 10-15min break,
and lectures often take 2 adjacent slots. But these are 3 slot lectures.

