How to Use This Course

Study rhythm

For each topic, write a one-slide architecture note: metric → mechanism → experiment → change → validation . This mirrors how senior architects debug performance in production programs.

• Read the topic hub, then mechanism and reports subpages.

• Do interview drills aloud — 2 minutes per question.

• Cross-link to RTL for implementation and PD for physical consequences.

• Use section Q&A banks for mock interview blocks.

Prerequisites

• Basic RTL and digital design (RTL course foundations).

• Familiarity with caches and pipelines at undergraduate level helps.

• No specific simulator required — concepts are tool-agnostic.

Tools you may use alongside

• Performance simulators (gem5, vendor IP models)

• PMU / trace tools on silicon or FPGA

• Spreadsheet roofline and bandwidth models

Key takeaways

• Architecture mastery is measured by predicting metric movement before changing the design.

• Always name the workload when discussing IPC or cache policy.

Architecture deep dive

Computer architecture decisions must be tied to workload metrics and silicon constraints.

Concept diagram

ARCHITECTURE DECISION LOOP

workload → metric → bottleneck mechanism → experiment → design option → validation

Metric graph

METRIC TREND

bad run  ██████████
base     ██████████████
target   ████████████████████

Metrics and artifacts

• IPC/CPI

• latency

• bandwidth

• power

• area

• verification risk

Mini case study

A senior architecture review converts a vague performance issue into a metric, a mechanism, an experiment, and a bounded design choice.

Debug branches

• If the metric is not workload-specific, do not accept the conclusion.

• If the fix has no PPA and verification statement, the review is incomplete.

Senior review question

Ask: what single metric would prove this concept is working or failing on your workload?

Key takeaways

• Connect every architecture claim to a workload and measurable metric.

• State verification and PPA impact before proposing design changes.

Common pitfalls

• Feature-driven design without MPKI/IPC/bandwidth evidence.

• Ignoring coherency and NoC traffic in cache and accelerator sizing.