Digital Design & Computer Arch. - Lecture 22: Memory Organization & Memory Technology (Spring 2022)

Why It Matters

Memory and storage, not CPUs or GPUs, now constrain system performance and user-facing features; understanding memory technology and organization is therefore central to future hardware and software design. Progress in memory/SSDs will determine the practical limits of performance, power and application innovation.

Summary

In this lecture the professor shifts focus from processors to memory, arguing that memory and storage are the dominant bottlenecks in modern computing. He frames the discussion with Amdahl’s law to show why accelerating computation alone yields limited system speedups when memory dominates execution time. The course will spend the next lectures on memory organization and technologies—DRAM, SSDs/flash and related trade-offs—highlighting that memory advances have driven consumer device capabilities. The instructor also urges critical thinking about architectural paradigms and offers a short extra-credit reading on Amdahl’s paper.

Original Description

Digital Design and Computer Architecture, ETH Zürich, Spring 2022 (https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/)

Lecture 22: Memory Organization and Memory Technology

Lecturer: Professor Onur Mutlu (https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/)

Date: May 19, 2022

Lecture 22 Slides (pptx): https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=onur-digitaldesign_comparch-2022-lecture22-memory-organization-afterlecture.pptx

Lecture 22 Slides (pdf): https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=onur-digitaldesign_comparch-2022-lecture22-memory-organization-afterlecture.pdf

Recommended Reading:

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A Modern Primer on Processing in Memory

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03112

Intelligent Architectures for Intelligent Computing Systems

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.12381

RowHammer: A Retrospective

https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/pub/RowHammer-Retrospective_ieee_tcad19.pdf

Fundamentally Understanding and Solving RowHammer

https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.07613

RECOMMENDED LECTURE VIDEOS & PLAYLISTS:

========================================

Computer Architecture Fall 2021 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yfkM_5EFgo&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi-Mnk1PxjEIG32HAGILkTOF

Digital Design and Computer Architecture Spring 2021 Livestream Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbC0EZY8yw4&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi_uej3aY39YB5pfW4SJ7LlN

Featured Lectures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVYCchBGNVc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8VrmOTz44l2WupethSdh-M&index=1

Interview with Professor Onur Mutlu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ffSEKZhmvo&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8VrmOTz44l2WupethSdh-M&index=9

The Story of RowHammer Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgd7PHQQ1AI&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=39

Accelerating Genome Analysis Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7sn41lH-4A&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=41

Memory-Centric Computing Systems Tutorial at IEDM 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3sEaINPBOE&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=35

Intelligent Architectures for Intelligent Machines Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTieZPY4Wmc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=38

Computer Architecture Fall 2020 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3mPdZA-Fmc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi9xidyIgBxUz7xRPS-wisBN

Digital Design and Computer Architecture Spring 2020 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJBmIaUneB0&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi_FRrloMa2fUYWPGiZUBQo2

Public Lectures by Onur Mutlu, Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgiZlSOcGFM&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl

Computer Architecture at Carnegie Mellon Spring 2015 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLP_X4wyHbY&list=PL5PHm2jkkXmi5CxxI7b3JCL1TWybTDtKq

Rethinking Memory System Design Lecture @stanfordonline :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7xZLNMIY1E&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=4