Using Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory for In-memory Graph Analytics
Intel Optane DC persistent memory modules are like DRAM in form factor and can be configured as volatile main memory, persistent memory or as a combination.
Tackling the Pipeline Problem in the Architecture Research Community
Computer architecture is an important and exciting field of computer science, which enables many other fields (eg. big-data processing, machine learning, quantum computing, and so on). For those of us who pursued computer architecture as a career, this is well...
Three Other Models of Computer System Performance: Part 2
With two blog posts, we argue for more use of simple models beyond Amdahl’s Law. Part 1 previously discussed Bottleneck Analysis and Little’s Law, while this post (Part 2) presents the M/M/1 Queue.
HPCA-25 Summary
HPCA celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with significant participation of over 300 attendees! It was held in Washington D.C., USA between February 16-20. Accelerators was a bigger theme this year (not only for ML but covering a broader range of domains...
Three Other Models of Computer System Performance: Part 1
With two blog posts, we argue for more use of simple models beyond Amdahl’s Law. This Part 1 discusses Bottleneck Analysis and Little’s Law, while Part 2 presents the M/M/1 Queue. Computer systems, from the Internet-of-Things devices to datacenters, are complex and...
Tips for a New Computer Architecture PhD Student
I have been fortunate enough to have many helpful senior students and two wonderful advisors to learn from throughout my PhD. Now as a senior PhD student myself, I have identified some lessons that proved most valuable as well as common mistakes made by younger...
The Role of Luck in Academic Careers
Modern academic culture is founded on perpetual evaluation and relentless ranking of researchers and their results. Obtaining competitive research funds and publishing in top-tier venues are prerequisites to a successful career. Unfortunately, as was shown by several...
Scaling the Network Wall in Data-Intensive Computing
Previous posts in the Computer Architecture Today series have explored how the broader adoption of smart NICs is providing applications a mechanism to push computation closer to the data and inside the network stack to hide the latency of accessing remote memory in a...
Artifact Evaluation for Reproducible Quantitative Research
We all love good ol’ architecture research! From a germ of an idea, through a thorny path of its implementation and validation, to its publication. With its publication, hopefully comes its adoption. With its adoption, grows our reputation. With our reputation, come to us many good things including fantastic colleagues and lucrative grants! Therefore, it ought to bother us a great deal when good ideas get no adoption. And that’s why we care deeply about understanding and eliminating barriers to successful adoption. In this blog post, we discuss “Artifact Evaluation” to foster wider adoption of computer architecture ideas.
Please Disclose Security Vulnerabilities!
In a recent opinion post on security disclosures, Uht questions if the public disclosure of hardware security vulnerabilities has had any benefits, and suggests that it would be better not to disclose these vulnerabilities. As Uht points out, debate on security...Subscribe
