SYSARCH

PRESENTATION
SYSTEMS & ARCHITECTURE THREAD OVERVIEW
• Systems & Architecture is a thread that focuses more on the lower levels of
computer science, putting a greater focus on the more technical aspects of
computer science.
• For instance, topics like computer architecture, operating systems, and
even computer hardware are encapsulated by this field.
• Programming languages like Assembly and C code are covered in more
depth in systems & architecture than other threads.
• Since these topics are not as important to other threads, like theory,
intelligence, people, etc., they are more exclusive to the systems &
architecture thread.
 CS 2110
• CS 2110 – Intro to Computer Systems, more or less acts as an introductory
class to systems & architecture.
• It covers every level of computing, down from the lowest level at digital
logic, up to microcode, then the assembly, then all the way up to higher
level languages like C code. Getting a full appreciation for the entire
computational process.
• You start with Boolean logic, working with binary, then digital logic,
creating circuits that are used in processors, like gates, an ALU, and even a
state machine.
• You then work up to microcode, which works by understanding the circuitry
of the CPU and then programming it.
• Next is Assembly, where you learn to program using the base Instruction
Set Architecture of the computer.
• Finally, C code, where you learn how to code with C by coding a Game Boy
Advance game. Learning a language with is more practical for modern day
 CS 3210
• CS 3210 – Operating Systems, is a class which continues off from where CS
2200 leaves off, going more in depth with operating systems.
• Has a focus in UNIX/Linux based operating systems.
• The class is more hands on, being application and lab focused.
• The point of the class is to get hands on experience working with a real OS
kernel so that you can use that experience with other kernels.
• You need good C skills in order to succeed at the class. In addition, you’ll
need to know x86 assembly.
• The Projects include building a network stack, the basics of getting a
process running, adding multiprocessor support, etc.
 CS 4290
• CS 4290 – Advanced Computer Organization, is a class which continues on
from CS 2200, going more in depth with computer system architecture
design.
• Topics that are covered in the course are computer organization, instruction
set design, memory system design, pipelining, cache coherence protocols,
memory schedulers, power/energy, prefetching and other techniques to
explore instruction set level parallelism and thread level parallelism.
• You also have case studies on modern microprocessor design.
• Projects you will do include 5-stage pipeline design, Memory systems, and
power simulations
 HABANERO EXTREME SCALE SOFTWARE
• Habanero Extreme Scale Software is a research project that is trying to
create a major disruption in the computing industry by going beyond
Moore’s law by making new innovations beyond the status quo in
computing hardware and processors. They’re trying to develop new
programming technologies that will be supported on future hardware by
focusing on parallelism in computing and high-performance architecture.
• Some of the people working on this project include a faculty member Dr.
Vivek Sarkar, Administrative assistant, Ruthie Brook, Research Scientists,
Max Grossman, Akihiro Hayashi, Jun Shirako, and Jisheng Zhao, Postdoctoral
Researcher, Sri Raj Paul, PhD Students, Seonmyeong Bak, Prithayan Barua,
Prasanth Chatarasi, Sana Damani, Youngsuk Kim, Ankush Mandal, Caleb
Voss, Matthew Whitlock, Fangke Ye, Lechen Yu, and Tong Zhou, and
Undergraduate Students, Kun Chen, Christian Gutowski, Mahesh
Khanwalkar, James Luo, Aditya Parekh, Ohad Rau, Matthew Sternberg, Trai
Tran, and Joshua Viszlai
 SYSTEMS AND ARCHITECTURES FOR ROBOTICS
AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
• Systems and Architectures for Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles is a
research project that puts the focus of systems and architecture for robotics
and autonomous vehicles. The group has many publications such as
– Towards a General-Purpose Cognitive Drone
Sam Jijina, Adriana Amyette,, Ramyad Hadidi, Hyesoon Kim
The Fourth Workshop on Cognitive Architectures (CogArch 2020), co-located
with HPCA 2020, San Diego, CA (2020)
• They do work on Drones, FPGA-Based Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and
Collaborative Robots.
• The people involved are mostly undergraduate CS students who are advised
by PhD Candidate, Ramyad Hadidi, Masters Student Jiashen Cao, and
Faculty Professor Hyesoon Kim. The group belongs to the HpArch (High
Performance Architecture) Research Lab.
 CALEB SOUTHERN
• Caleb Southern teaches 2110, which, as stated before, acts as an
introduction to sysarch class, that leads into 2200.
• He teaches this 2000’s level class in addition to some other 1000’s level
classes, like 1315.
• He helped develop the BrailleTouch, an iPhone application to type using
braille on your touchscreen. This technology ties into his research on
BrailleTouch, which is to help people with visual deficiencies to with
assistive technology.
• He does most of his work in human-computer interaction.
• Some of his publications include:
– Southern, C., Clawson, J., Frey, B., Abowd, G. D., Romero, M., "An Evaluation of
BrailleTouch: Mobile Touchscreen Text Entry for the Visually Impaired." Mobile
HCI 2012. San Francisco, September 2012.
– Romero, M., Frey, B., Southern, C., Abowd, G. D., "BrailleTouch: Designing a
Mobile Eyes-Free Soft Keyboard." Mobile HCI 2011, Design Competition.
 DR. VIVEK SARKAR
• Dr. Vivek Sarkar is a professor at Georgia Tech who is deeply mired in research and
teaches upper level courses at Georgia Tech. Classes such as CS 4240, which is
Compilers and Interpreters during the spring semesters and then teaches CS 6390,
which is the graduate class for programming languages in the fall, mostly teaching
upper level courses.
• Dr. Vivek Sarkar also is the Co-Director for the Center for Research into Novel
Computing Hierarchies and leads the Habanero Extreme Scale Software Research Lab.
• Some of his projects that he works on or has worked on include things in the Habanero
Extreme Scale Software Research Lab where they try to push the limits of computer
hardware and processors and go beyond Moore’s Law by using Non-Von Neuman
computing elements, which most processors are based on.
• He also has publications on parallelization:
– Optimized Unrolling of Nested Loops. Vivek Sarkar. International Journal on  Parallel
Programming 29(5), pps. 545-581, October 2001.
– Automatic Parallelization for Symmetric Shared-Memory Multiprocessors. Jyh-Herng Chow,
Leonard E. Lyon, and Vivek Sarkar. Proceedings of CASCON ’96  conference, Toronto, Canada,
November 1996.
 MS IN SYSARCH
• At Georgia Tech, if you want to continue with Sysarch courses during your
time in undergraduate, you can do a masters in Sysarch. If you do a
masters at Georgia Tech, then you can do a specialization High Performance
Computing or Computing Systems, both of which feed in from the Sysarch
courses you take in undergraduate courses.
• Getting a masters in computer science with either of these specializations
will have you go more in depth with computer architecture, operating
systems, and other topics dealing with systems and architecture.
 SYSARCH IN THE INDUSTRY
• Systems and Architecture is very important to the industry of computer
science. In fact, you could almost argue that sysarch forms the foundations
of the entire industry.
• For instance, the creation of computer architecture is very important to
make sure that industry keeps on innovating.
• Examples include the ARM company, known in the past for their Acorn
computer, who invented the ARM computer architecture, used in low power
devices like phones and mobile gaming units, they are known for their
efficiency by having less instructions in the Instruction Set Architecture.
• Another example of widely used architecture is Intel’s x86-64 architecture.
• Sysarch is also very important for operating systems, with the development
of the Linux kernel and in development of Windows and Macintosh
operating systems.
END OF PRESENTATION