14 ms·

Computer Architecture – ETH Zürich – Fall 2019

654 points by skovorodkin 7y ago

veselin 7y ago
This is one of the best courses at ETH (computer science). Too bad I finished the PhD before this course was there. Another very interesting course is "Reliable and Interpretable Artificial Intelligence".
- zekrioca 7y ago
  > Another very interesting course is "Reliable and Interpretable Artificial Intelligence". Which is not freely available. Do you know where we could have access to it? Thanks! EDIT: some miswording.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- bionicbits 7y ago
  How was attending this University? I recently moved family abroad from USA. Hoping my daughter may have interest in attending here for computer science. I am just blown away by the cost of US Universities. Not sure what you get out of USA schools anymore compared to some European Universities?
  - yannovitch 7y ago
    Not the OP, but I studied at ETH Lausanne and visited at ETH Zurich, and it was my best academic memory, surpassing Paris, London or the other universities I attended. So I recommend you a lot to try to get into this School, it's one of the best in the world, and the price of the education is a bargain compared to the comparable US universities.
    - Thimothy 7y ago
      In case someone gets confused searching for it, normally the federal politecnic university at Lausanne is called by its French name, EPFL. ETH Zürich has better score in international ratings, but the EPFL doesn't lag behind much. It's a really top noch place to learn any technical career.
      - giu 7y ago
        Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Scala programming language was created at EPFL: https://scala.epfl.ch/ https://scala.epfl.ch/ Martin Odersky (the original author) is still a professor there and teaches some Computer Science courses: http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/ http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/
  - veselin 7y ago
    Yes. For PhD, it is paid very well. For MSc and BSc the cost is low. What ends up high are the living costs in Zurich. But given how much these costs have increased in the hot US cities, this may not be a problem.
  - jmiserez 7y ago
    I'm certainly satisfied with my education from ETHZ, but the question is very broad. Feel free to email me if you have more specific questions.
  - giu 7y ago
    I enjoyed my time there a lot (did a BSc and MSc there) and can recommend it to anyone who's interested in the engineering and natural sciences. School doesn't cost much (I paid around 600CHF per semester), provides a great infrastructure (for one, I was already running simulations on a high-performance distributed-memory cluster during my third BSc semester), allows you to meet and work with a lot of great people, and you are also able to choose from a vast number of very interesting lectures thought by some great scientists (this gets unlocked during your MSc). One of the "downsides" to ETH Zürich is that it's quite competetive right from the beginning: you have to pass the Basisprüfung after your first year to continue your studies there (8-9 exams during the month of August), which 40%-50% of the attending students will not pass (it's kind of a "filter-exam"); this is one of the differences compared to the popular US universities: everyone with a high school degree (Gymnasium here in Switzerland) is allowed to attend University here in Switzerland, i.e., we don't have interviews or entry exams for most of the BSc majors (medical school is an exception). If you have questions, feel free to contact me (see my profile). All the best to you and your daughter!
  - Youden 7y ago
    A comparison I've heard is that ETH is like Europe's MIT. However you should be aware that undergraduate courses are generally taught in German (at least in Zürich): https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/common/docs/weisungssammlung/files-en/languages-of-instruction.pdf https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/common/docs/weisungssammlun...
ljhsiung 7y ago
In high school I used to watch Onur's lectures while he was still at CMU. Probably a significant reason for where I am now.
- person_of_color 7y ago
  Where are you?
  - bigfoot675 7y ago
    I am guessing he is at ETH Zurich
  - etagobla 7y ago
    Prison, it's Onur's stalker.
pjmlp 7y ago
And as a continuation of it, with a little of Active Oberon and non-UNIX OSes along the way, https://www.systems.ethz.ch/node/1447 https://www.systems.ethz.ch/node/1447 https://lec.inf.ethz.ch/syscon/2019/ https://lec.inf.ethz.ch/syscon/2019/
- bogomipz 7y ago
  The "Advanced Operating Systems" looks fantastic! Do you or perhaps anyone else know if there are any video lectures for this similar to Onur's "Computer Architecture" class?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Sadly no. I just decided cross check some old links to see what they would be doing nowadays. I guess someone else would need to jump in.
  - rptr_87 7y ago
    Prof. Kubi, Berkeley univ has a very good course on Advanced OS. May be you will find this useful. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs194-24-S14/index_lectures.html https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs194-24-...
herodotus 7y ago
Too bad they host their course videos on Youtube. It has become painful to use. I don't understand why they cannot host them on their own server.
- willbw 7y ago
  Interested to hear how you think self-hosted video is superior to Youtube, I have found the opposite to be true in every circumstance (unless you are without adblocker for some reason).
  - LeftHandPath 7y ago
    I've actually started to hate YouTube so much (just for being terrible to content-creators and consumers, and supporting toxic videos (time watched is a ranking factor, promoting high-engagement "edgeline videos)), and so on and so forth) that I wanted to create a white-label HTML video player that would keep the benefits of a consistent, well-made UI but drop the publisher aspect of YouTube. I don't think I ever will, but the world needs an alternative that has a good encoding/optimization (like switching to lower bitrates on slower connections), a unified interface (familiar no matter what site it's being used on) and that doesn't tempt users to write custom skins for the video player.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      And the player needs to fit into an ecosystem that will cover the bandwidth costs of the video it streams. I don't think that's a simple part of the system if one is seeking to avoid having any advertising (a good goal, that I'm absolutely for).
      - LeftHandPath 7y ago
        That's what I was wondering about. Honestly I was thinking that some sort of integration where content creators could be directly contacted by advertisers - who would pay for in-video advertising by the content creator (this is more for personalities than for corporations) - and have a vetted way to be payed for their time / platform / ads would work (with companies paying to be part of that system). This would result in higher quality ads that are more beneficial to the content creator than the video distributor (a goal I view as equally good). And to benefit the companies advertising, you could create a tool where shorter clips of the advertisement could be sent back and forth, previewed, and approved as needed (if integrated with a payment system, this protects both parties from a bad deal). I also think some, but not all, content creators would view paying for a small hosting company to store and stream their videos in the same way they view buying a new webcam or microphone.
ayepif 7y ago
What would you say are the prerequisites for this course? It looks interesting but I've never taken a Comp Arch course myself and worry I'll be too far out of depth.
- bsder 7y ago
  Give it a try. The lectures I looked at don't look like they require much more than being able to read basic assembly language, and some of them probably don't even need that. The GPU lecture is particularly good and doesn't seem to require much more than basic programming knowledge.
ChrisRus 7y ago
I am going to watch the whole thing. I guess now it will be largely review. But, the fascination is in the instruction; this is not an easy topic to teach.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
somebodythere 7y ago
I've been following Onur's Design of Digital Circuits. I even bought a Basys 3 FPGA to do the labs. It's really helped me break down the black box that is the CPU I program as a software dev (I finally understand Spectre and Meltdown), and I'm learning basic FPGA dev as a nice bonus.
- evancox100 7y ago
  Where did you find the lab material?
  - spai2 7y ago
    https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=labs https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
- vymague 7y ago
  That's amazing. I wouldn't expect an intro architecture class would let someone to understand cutting edge stuffs like Spectre and Meltdown.
jhallenworld 7y ago
Wow, very DRAM centric view of computer architecture. Where is Tomasulo algorithm, for example.. Not as much about caches that I would expect.. Maybe there are other courses for this stuff.
- skovorodkin 7y ago
  There's a lecture on Out-of-Order execution [1] in the Design of Digital Circuits course [2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALyN0-jBrw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALyN0-jBrw [2] https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Koshkin 7y ago
  To be fair, modern computer hardware and CPU in particular are so complex that any "computer architecture" course of a reasonable size will be far removed from the real stuff.
- ajdlinux 7y ago
  Take a look at https://www.udacity.com/course/high-performance-computer-architecture--ud007 https://www.udacity.com/course/high-performance-computer-arc...
p1esk 7y ago
From the lecture titles it seems to be almost entirely about memory. Is this a subset of their comparch course? If so, where’s the rest of it?
- crashocaster 7y ago
  Much of the CompArch topics are covered in his first year course: https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
jackcodes 7y ago
I’m looking for almost exactly this, but an abstraction or two higher - software architecture. Almost like SICP but as a course where I can follow along in more bite size chunks with video lectures. Does anyone have a recommended course?
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  The class doesn't exist because the adequately architected software barely exists.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Isn't that the truth. Sometimes I feel like the only sane person in an insane world when no one seems to admit that no one really understands how to architect software.
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  Maybe elements of computing systems?
  - jackcodes 7y ago
    I’m struggling to search for this, is it by a particular university or provider?
    - adamnemecek 7y ago
      https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/
      - jackcodes 7y ago
        Thank you
- person_of_color 7y ago
  This will change your life. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-172-performance-engineering-of-software-systems-fall-2018/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
jakobmi 7y ago
I can as well highly recommend this course, as well as the professor! Outstanding!
deepakkarki 7y ago
The lectures are by Onur Mutlu, an ex-CMU prof and a gifted teacher. He also teaches stuff on memory systems and digital design of circuits. All of his course videos are available online on his youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwQ8uOeRFgOEvBLYc3kc3g/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwQ8uOeRFgOEvBLYc3kc3g/pla...
- mileycyrusXOXO 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I was looking for something exactly like this earlier today.
SemiTom 7y ago
another good Youtube playlist for Architectures from Semiconductor Engineering https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4RrBxLcT1nY9ugQ_V-1pgbRTwdl2FQ3H https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4RrBxLcT1nY9ugQ_V-1p...
williamDafoe 7y ago
As someone who taught this at a top 10 university, it doesn't look to me like a very good course. I feel like you should have all the basics to design a CPU by the end of the course and this course fails completely to teach the Breadth necessary for CPU design
- passwert 7y ago
  I'm curious, do you mind explaining, what a top 10 university is (e.g. ranked by students, number of published papers etc.)? FYI, the ETH is also considered as a top 10 university (top 6 actually according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings)
  - krn 7y ago
    > I'm curious, do you mind explaining, what a top 10 university is (e.g. ranked by students, number of published papers etc.)? If the comment was made by a professor in the U.S., it could have meant "top 10 <in the field> in North America".
- crashocaster 7y ago
  His prerequisite first year course [0] actually matches your description more, and even has students designing their own CPUs on FPGAs. I feel like this course goes more in the direction of his own research interest, and already assumes the basic "breath" you speak of. [0] https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
pikseladam 7y ago
My friend Abdullah works with him. He was the best in the country.

654 points by skovorodkin 7y ago

This is one of the best courses at ETH (computer science). Too bad I finished the PhD before this course was there. Another very interesting course is "Reliable and Interpretable Artificial Intelligence".

zekrioca 7y ago
> Another very interesting course is "Reliable and Interpretable Artificial Intelligence". Which is not freely available. Do you know where we could have access to it? Thanks! EDIT: some miswording.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bionicbits 7y ago
How was attending this University? I recently moved family abroad from USA. Hoping my daughter may have interest in attending here for computer science. I am just blown away by the cost of US Universities. Not sure what you get out of USA schools anymore compared to some European Universities?
- yannovitch 7y ago
  Not the OP, but I studied at ETH Lausanne and visited at ETH Zurich, and it was my best academic memory, surpassing Paris, London or the other universities I attended. So I recommend you a lot to try to get into this School, it's one of the best in the world, and the price of the education is a bargain compared to the comparable US universities.
  - Thimothy 7y ago
    In case someone gets confused searching for it, normally the federal politecnic university at Lausanne is called by its French name, EPFL. ETH Zürich has better score in international ratings, but the EPFL doesn't lag behind much. It's a really top noch place to learn any technical career.
    - giu 7y ago
      Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Scala programming language was created at EPFL: https://scala.epfl.ch/ https://scala.epfl.ch/ Martin Odersky (the original author) is still a professor there and teaches some Computer Science courses: http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/ http://lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/
- veselin 7y ago
  Yes. For PhD, it is paid very well. For MSc and BSc the cost is low. What ends up high are the living costs in Zurich. But given how much these costs have increased in the hot US cities, this may not be a problem.
- jmiserez 7y ago
  I'm certainly satisfied with my education from ETHZ, but the question is very broad. Feel free to email me if you have more specific questions.
- giu 7y ago
  I enjoyed my time there a lot (did a BSc and MSc there) and can recommend it to anyone who's interested in the engineering and natural sciences. School doesn't cost much (I paid around 600CHF per semester), provides a great infrastructure (for one, I was already running simulations on a high-performance distributed-memory cluster during my third BSc semester), allows you to meet and work with a lot of great people, and you are also able to choose from a vast number of very interesting lectures thought by some great scientists (this gets unlocked during your MSc). One of the "downsides" to ETH Zürich is that it's quite competetive right from the beginning: you have to pass the Basisprüfung after your first year to continue your studies there (8-9 exams during the month of August), which 40%-50% of the attending students will not pass (it's kind of a "filter-exam"); this is one of the differences compared to the popular US universities: everyone with a high school degree (Gymnasium here in Switzerland) is allowed to attend University here in Switzerland, i.e., we don't have interviews or entry exams for most of the BSc majors (medical school is an exception). If you have questions, feel free to contact me (see my profile). All the best to you and your daughter!
- Youden 7y ago
  A comparison I've heard is that ETH is like Europe's MIT. However you should be aware that undergraduate courses are generally taught in German (at least in Zürich): https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/common/docs/weisungssammlung/files-en/languages-of-instruction.pdf https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/common/docs/weisungssammlun...

ljhsiung 7y ago

In high school I used to watch Onur's lectures while he was still at CMU. Probably a significant reason for where I am now.

person_of_color 7y ago
Where are you?
- bigfoot675 7y ago
  I am guessing he is at ETH Zurich
- etagobla 7y ago
  Prison, it's Onur's stalker.

pjmlp 7y ago

And as a continuation of it, with a little of Active Oberon and non-UNIX OSes along the way, https://www.systems.ethz.ch/node/1447 https://www.systems.ethz.ch/node/1447 https://lec.inf.ethz.ch/syscon/2019/ https://lec.inf.ethz.ch/syscon/2019/

bogomipz 7y ago
The "Advanced Operating Systems" looks fantastic! Do you or perhaps anyone else know if there are any video lectures for this similar to Onur's "Computer Architecture" class?
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Sadly no. I just decided cross check some old links to see what they would be doing nowadays. I guess someone else would need to jump in.
- rptr_87 7y ago
  Prof. Kubi, Berkeley univ has a very good course on Advanced OS. May be you will find this useful. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs194-24-S14/index_lectures.html https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs194-24-...

herodotus 7y ago

Too bad they host their course videos on Youtube. It has become painful to use. I don't understand why they cannot host them on their own server.

willbw 7y ago
Interested to hear how you think self-hosted video is superior to Youtube, I have found the opposite to be true in every circumstance (unless you are without adblocker for some reason).
- LeftHandPath 7y ago
  I've actually started to hate YouTube so much (just for being terrible to content-creators and consumers, and supporting toxic videos (time watched is a ranking factor, promoting high-engagement "edgeline videos)), and so on and so forth) that I wanted to create a white-label HTML video player that would keep the benefits of a consistent, well-made UI but drop the publisher aspect of YouTube. I don't think I ever will, but the world needs an alternative that has a good encoding/optimization (like switching to lower bitrates on slower connections), a unified interface (familiar no matter what site it's being used on) and that doesn't tempt users to write custom skins for the video player.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    And the player needs to fit into an ecosystem that will cover the bandwidth costs of the video it streams. I don't think that's a simple part of the system if one is seeking to avoid having any advertising (a good goal, that I'm absolutely for).
    - LeftHandPath 7y ago
      That's what I was wondering about. Honestly I was thinking that some sort of integration where content creators could be directly contacted by advertisers - who would pay for in-video advertising by the content creator (this is more for personalities than for corporations) - and have a vetted way to be payed for their time / platform / ads would work (with companies paying to be part of that system). This would result in higher quality ads that are more beneficial to the content creator than the video distributor (a goal I view as equally good). And to benefit the companies advertising, you could create a tool where shorter clips of the advertisement could be sent back and forth, previewed, and approved as needed (if integrated with a payment system, this protects both parties from a bad deal). I also think some, but not all, content creators would view paying for a small hosting company to store and stream their videos in the same way they view buying a new webcam or microphone.

ayepif 7y ago

What would you say are the prerequisites for this course? It looks interesting but I've never taken a Comp Arch course myself and worry I'll be too far out of depth.

bsder 7y ago
Give it a try. The lectures I looked at don't look like they require much more than being able to read basic assembly language, and some of them probably don't even need that. The GPU lecture is particularly good and doesn't seem to require much more than basic programming knowledge.

ChrisRus 7y ago

I am going to watch the whole thing. I guess now it will be largely review. But, the fascination is in the instruction; this is not an easy topic to teach.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

somebodythere 7y ago

I've been following Onur's Design of Digital Circuits. I even bought a Basys 3 FPGA to do the labs. It's really helped me break down the black box that is the CPU I program as a software dev (I finally understand Spectre and Meltdown), and I'm learning basic FPGA dev as a nice bonus.

evancox100 7y ago
Where did you find the lab material?
- spai2 7y ago
  https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=labs https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
vymague 7y ago
That's amazing. I wouldn't expect an intro architecture class would let someone to understand cutting edge stuffs like Spectre and Meltdown.

jhallenworld 7y ago

Wow, very DRAM centric view of computer architecture. Where is Tomasulo algorithm, for example.. Not as much about caches that I would expect.. Maybe there are other courses for this stuff.

skovorodkin 7y ago
There's a lecture on Out-of-Order execution [1] in the Design of Digital Circuits course [2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALyN0-jBrw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALyN0-jBrw [2] https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Koshkin 7y ago
To be fair, modern computer hardware and CPU in particular are so complex that any "computer architecture" course of a reasonable size will be far removed from the real stuff.
ajdlinux 7y ago
Take a look at https://www.udacity.com/course/high-performance-computer-architecture--ud007 https://www.udacity.com/course/high-performance-computer-arc...

p1esk 7y ago

From the lecture titles it seems to be almost entirely about memory. Is this a subset of their comparch course? If so, where’s the rest of it?

crashocaster 7y ago
Much of the CompArch topics are covered in his first year course: https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...

jackcodes 7y ago

I’m looking for almost exactly this, but an abstraction or two higher - software architecture. Almost like SICP but as a course where I can follow along in more bite size chunks with video lectures. Does anyone have a recommended course?

Ericson2314 7y ago
The class doesn't exist because the adequately architected software barely exists.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Isn't that the truth. Sometimes I feel like the only sane person in an insane world when no one seems to admit that no one really understands how to architect software.
adamnemecek 7y ago
Maybe elements of computing systems?
- jackcodes 7y ago
  I’m struggling to search for this, is it by a particular university or provider?
  - adamnemecek 7y ago
    https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/
    - jackcodes 7y ago
      Thank you
person_of_color 7y ago
This will change your life. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-172-performance-engineering-of-software-systems-fall-2018/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...

jakobmi 7y ago

I can as well highly recommend this course, as well as the professor! Outstanding!

deepakkarki 7y ago

The lectures are by Onur Mutlu, an ex-CMU prof and a gifted teacher. He also teaches stuff on memory systems and digital design of circuits. All of his course videos are available online on his youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwQ8uOeRFgOEvBLYc3kc3g/playlists https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwQ8uOeRFgOEvBLYc3kc3g/pla...

mileycyrusXOXO 7y ago
Thanks for sharing, I was looking for something exactly like this earlier today.

SemiTom 7y ago

another good Youtube playlist for Architectures from Semiconductor Engineering https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4RrBxLcT1nY9ugQ_V-1pgbRTwdl2FQ3H https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4RrBxLcT1nY9ugQ_V-1p...

williamDafoe 7y ago

As someone who taught this at a top 10 university, it doesn't look to me like a very good course. I feel like you should have all the basics to design a CPU by the end of the course and this course fails completely to teach the Breadth necessary for CPU design

passwert 7y ago
I'm curious, do you mind explaining, what a top 10 university is (e.g. ranked by students, number of published papers etc.)? FYI, the ETH is also considered as a top 10 university (top 6 actually according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings)
- krn 7y ago
  > I'm curious, do you mind explaining, what a top 10 university is (e.g. ranked by students, number of published papers etc.)? If the comment was made by a professor in the U.S., it could have meant "top 10 <in the field> in North America".
crashocaster 7y ago
His prerequisite first year course [0] actually matches your description more, and even has students designing their own CPUs on FPGAs. I feel like this course goes more in the direction of his own research interest, and already assumes the basic "breath" you speak of. [0] https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id=schedule https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2019/doku.php?id...

pikseladam 7y ago

My friend Abdullah works with him. He was the best in the country.