Synthesis lectures on computer architecture published by MORGAN&CLAYPOOL is a series of books aiming at providing high-quality research surveys about computer architecture. Written by many experts from various cutting-edge research areas, these lectures cover many hard-core topics, ranging from Google datacenter construction to customized accelerator architectures. A broad spectrum of research work from top academic conferences such as ISCA, HPCA, MICRO and ASPLOS (the big four) is introduced. These are perfect materials worth reading by every computer science student, electric engineer, and system programmer. Personally speaking, I am very fond of this series. These books really opened my mind and taught me what a modern computing system contains from different aspects, like silent companions during my PhD student life.
However, even though these lectures serve as introductory surveys and tutorials, it is not easy to learn the detailed content for a rookie who just enters her/his research area only with enthusiasm for new things, whom I was. Each synthesis lecture covers a concrete research subject that often takes four or five years for a PhD student to publish several novel ideas. Then they could modestly say they know this research area. Therefore, reading some lectures are tough tasks, especially when the contents are always out of your knowledge scope. It feels like solving an endless puzzle. After you figure out a problem, another comes up.
This experience leads to the creation of this repository. I would like to share my pleasure when reading these lectures. My personal reading notes of the synthesis lectures on computer architecture are offered to pave the way for newcomers who are also very interested in the computer architecture stuff. The reading notes in this repo contain additional summarizations and explanations for concepts from original lectures that I think are not so friendly. Illustrative figures and tables are included to make the notes easier to read. Related papers and projects that are not mentioned in the original lectures are also listed.
This repo is just a hobby project and will not be strictly organized as academic papers. All the contents are totally biased and subjective. It is intended for first-year or second-year graduate students, chip architects and system programmers who would like to gain a deeper understanding of modern research topics and technical evolution process. However, it's not substitutions of the original lecture books. Because these notes are from a plain PhD student, mistakes are inevitable in the provided texts. When you find a bug or an inappropriate description, please press the new issue button. If you think the reading notes in this repo are a bunch of crap, kind of unnecessary, you are totally right. Just pick your favorite one from these great lectures, read it and share your thoughts with us. Until now (July, 2021), the publisher has issued over 50 synthesis lectures. It's impossible for me to cover all of them in a short time. It's a project in the long run. So any contribution is welcomed.
Please note that this repo will not share you with original copies of these lecture books, due to copyright issues. If you want to read the full text, please consult library employees in your college or just buy an electronic version from the MORGAN&CLAYPOOL website.