ASSIGNMENT # 1
Read and review two published scientific papers
PAPER 1
Author, Title
Iain Bate and Ralf Reutemann, Worst-Case Execution Time Analysis for Dynamic Branch Predictors
• Is the paper well organized?
The paper under review is well done and it reflect all rules to write a good paper. It's easy to read with appropriate
language, fonts and size. There are even references about publication (see bottom of page). The sections are well
distinct and connected each other by logical thread.
• Comment the following sections (if present):
• Title, it's appropriate, clear and explain exactly which is the paper's argument. There are not symbols inside but
appropriate words that could be used to search the paper in libraries database or in search engines. As most other papers,
there are addictional useful information about the author(s), such as their Department and email contacts.
• Abstract, it's concise (only 129 words) and not contain references and acronyms. It explain, in few words, which
is the use of branch prediction mechanism, what will be improved and what will be provided.
• Introduction, it's short enough. It summarize the state of art about Branch Prediction, which are the problems to
resolve and the aim of the work. At the end, is explained how the paper will be organized in sections.
However, i think that “Branch Prediction Techniques” section, that represent background information about branch
prediction, and “Related Works” section must be part of Introduction section instead to be independent sections.
• Main section(s), are well defined and divided for complexity. In fact, the Section 4 describes the analysis model
for bimodal branch predictors and Section 5 extend the scope of the analysis to two-level branch predictiors.
At the end, Section 6 evaluate the analysis approach by using simulation results obatined from the SimpleScalar/PISA
simulator, an infrastructure for Computer System Modeling.
• Summary and Conclusions, are both integrated in one section and explain how this study improve older research
about the same problem and few guidelines for futher works.
• References, are well define and organized with information about the title, author(s), pages and/or source, year
and so on, and each older reference is well distinct from the current work and referenced at the end of paper.
• Comment on the language used in the paper.
The language is appropriete for treated arguments but it's not for common readers: there are a lot of specifics words,
acronyms and theorems which come from Branch-Prediction Analysis in the Real-Time System domain and even the
results are tested and then explained on a specific platform. Thus, i think that the language of this paper is little bit more
complex respect to the other paper. No typing errors were found.
• General comments to the paper.
Even if the language sometimes it's hard to understand because it contains specific terminology about the problem, the
paper is well structured and it contains appropriate examples, figures, formulas and theorems proofs that help readers to
understand the problem and the way followed to resolve it.
In general, i think that this is the best paper because the language is fluent, the structure is quite well done and there are
good reference all-over the text. As regards the skeleton, i think this is the best paper.
PAPER 2
Author, Title
Norman P. Jouppi , Improving Direct-Mapped Cache Performance by the Addition of a Small Fully-Associative Cache
and Prefetch Buffers
• Is the paper well organized?
Yes, all the sections are organized and defined accurately, even if Result and Conclusion are not distincted sections.
Subsections and paragraph are neither too long, nor too short.
• Comment the following sections (if present):
• Title: i think it's too long and for this reason search paper could be difficult. In addiction, informations about the
author are chaotic and not useful enough because there isn't an email contact and there are only informations about
research lab where the author works (i think!).
• Abstract: it starts explaining the problem under focus and three definitions about hardware technique. At the end
is explained how to use these definitions to achieve the goal.
I think it could have been a good overview if the definitions were omitted or defined in other words in order to have
shorter abstract (here, 297 words has been used).
• Introduction, it explains the nature of the problem and the context in which it is. Only one reference is given so
makes the lecturer less interesting. There are no related works that help the reader to understand the domain of problem.
• Main section(s), is enough understandable. The images are well explained both in caption and directly in the
section. I appreciate the examples, provided with images, but i think these contains too specifics parameters that make
paper hard to read. An important aspect is that there isn't a Result section: in fact, results are already contained into
previous sections.
It also contains several well-situated references.
• Summary and Conclusions, contains the conclusions with a comparison between studied technique and an
introduction to future works (with guidelines).
• References, are correctly listed, organized and it contains the right informations but the rules to write a good
paper not allow to reference to a private communication (see the 5 th reference).
• Comment on the language used in the paper.
The language used is complete and clear, a little bit more complex respect to the other papers due to domain-specific
examples. Despite it is not difficult to understand, it is a technical language. No typing errors were found.
• General comments to the paper.
Use of italic font with explanations of new words makes the text better so a person can identify and understand them the
first time he meet them. Use of figure with explanation helps understanding a lot but i think this paper needs some
corrections on the form of how it's written and a better organization.