Memory Systems

Organization

• This course will be held in English.
• This course is intended for master's students.
• The lecture is held by Prof. Dr. Guillermo Payá Vayá. The exercise is supervised by the research assistants.
• Entry in the official course directory.
• The lecture is is held in presence, Monday 15:00 to 16:30, Raum IZ 161, Gebaeude Mühlenpfordtstraße 23 (4103).
• The exercise takes place Tuesday after the lecture, 16:45 to 18:15.

Description

This course focusses on the main challenges for the design of modern semiconductor storage systems under the aspect of rapidly growing data storage requirements. Current, volatile and non-volatile memory types will be covered from the fundamental semiconductor technology level up to higher levels of system-level abstraction, with a focus on reliability and protection of stored data. Furthermore, Processing-in-Memory Architectures (PIM) based on conventional and 3D-stacked memories are analyzed, taking into account aspects such as low latency and energy consumption.

Contents

• Introduction to Memory Systems (Review)
• Overview on Memory Technology
  • Volatile Memories: SRAM, DRAM, CAM
  • Non-volatile Memories: ROM, Flash Memory, F-RAM, MRAM,...
• Main Memory: Interfaces, Commands, and Controllers
• Memory Cache
• Processing-in-Memory (PIM) / New Data Processing
  • Using traditional and 3D-Stacked memories
  • Low-latency interfaces

Oral Examination

The examination will be an oral examination. Dates will be announced in the course during the semester.

Literature

• Balasubramonian (2019): "Innovations in the Memory Systems", Morgen & Claypool Publishers
• Hennessy and Patterson (2017): "Computer Architecture. A Quantitative Approach", 6th Edition, Morgan Kaufmann
• Jacob, Ng, and Wang (2008): "Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk", Morgan Kaufmann"