Lecture 1

Learning objectives

After this class, you should be able to:

1. Describe the course objectives in general terms.
2. Describe your responsibilities regarding: following deadlines and instructions, assignments, project work, and reading assignments.
3. Explain course policies regarding attendance, missed exams, late assignment, an "I" grade, and professional ethics.
4. Give reasons for the recent trend toward multicore processors.

Reading assignment

1. Read the syllabus on blackboard.
2. Review material on computer architecture. In particular, read about the role of caches and the memory hierarchy.
3. Read the UIUC Lec-1 slides from slide 14 onwards.

Exercises and review questions

• Exercises and review questions on current lecture's material
  1. Obtain CS and FSU computer accounts, if you do not have them already.
  2. Access the class website using blackboard.
  3. Access the discussion board for this course, and check any messages there. You may also post messages there.
  4. What will your grade be if you get 88% overall in the course, but 74% in the exams?
  5. Obtain a coursemodo account. You will use this to answer questions in class and also to register your attendence. You need to bring a laptop or cell phone to class in order to do this.
  6. Login to gpu.cs.fsu.edu and look at all the files under the ~asriniva/GPU directory and its sub-directories. Copy the GPU related files, compile ex1.cu, and run it.
  7. Draw a graph, plotting clock speeds of different processors against the year in which that processor was first available. Historically, at what rate have clock speeds increased? How have they increased in recent years? How have the number of transistors increased historically and how have they increased in recent years?

• Preparation for the next lecture
  1. None.

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Last modified: 8 Jan 2013