Until recently, the vast majority of research efforts in optimizing computer systems have targeted a single logical “layer” in isolation: application code, operating systems, virtual machines, microarchitecture, or circuits. However, we are reaching the limits of the solutions than we can provide by targeting a single design layer in isolation. The Tortola project explores a symbiotic relations...

Micro-CT systems are available that facilitate ex vivo examinations of human specimens as big as entire vertebrae, with spatial resolutions in the 10-micrometer range. This opens a new way for looking at entire bones in 3D. Accurate description of the internal microarchitecture of the entire organ can be obtained, at spatial resolutions previously achievable only on excised biopsies. These high...

Public key encryption on resource constrained devices can be a burden in terms of latencies per operation but also in terms of energy consumed. For certain applications, such as WSN and RFID tags, the energy budget is quite small. Understanding the energy cost of each public key operation is important. This paper explores the energy consumption of public key cryptography by presenting a paramet...

We explore various intervals between register assignments and the subsequent uses of the same registers. We also explore memory stores and the subsequent loads to the same memory addresses. Three di erent types of access intervals are de ned and data are gathered on them using benchmarks. This data serves to provide insight about how a distributed microarchitecture might take advantage of the r...

We validate speculative and out-of-order execution microarchitecture using an ATPG-like methodology. The validation methodology uses FSM models derived from microarchitecture speciications. Complete transition tours are generated from the FSM models to obtain a high-level test sequence. Small assembly sequences associated with each FSM transition are used to translate FSM testing sequences into...

Modern embedded systems are in charge of an increasing number tasks that extensively employ floating-point (FP) computations. The ever-increasing efficiency requirement, coupled with the additional computational effort to perform FP computations, motivates several microarchitectural optimizations FPU. This manuscript presents a novel modular FPU microarchitecture, which targets modern and consi...

This study investigated microarchitectural, mechanical, collagen and mineral properties of normal adolescent cancellous bone, and compared them with adult and aging cancellous bone, to obtain more insight into the subchondral bone adaptations during development and growth. Twenty-three human proximal tibiae were harvested and divided into 3 groups according to their ages: adolescence (9 to 17 y...

With power density and hence cooling costs rising exponentially, processor packaging can no longer be designed for the worst case, and there is an urgent need for runtime processor-level techniques that can regulate operating temperature when the package’s capacity is exceeded. Evaluating such techniques, however, requires a thermal model that is practical for architectural studies. This paper ...

This paper describes the first Intel Pentium 4 processor manufactured on the 90nm process. We briefly review the NetBurst microarchitecture and discuss how this new implementation retains its key characteristics, such as the execution trace cache and a 2x frequency execution core designed for high throughput. This Pentium 4 processor improves upon the performance of prior implementations of the...

To identify the best processor designs, designers explore a vast design space. To assess the quality of candidate designs, designers construct and use simulators. Unfortunately, simulator construction is a bottleneck in this design-space exploration because existing simulator construction methodologies lead to long simulator development times. This bottleneck limits exploration to a small set o...