Computer Engineering
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Computer Architecture
Computer Circuits
Computer Systems
System Software
Networks
Digital & Analog Systems

CE - A student perspective
• Undergraduate program – both ECE and SoC
– some required courses, some electives, & a senior project or thesis
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• details http://www.ce.utah.edu
numerous faculty involved in CE research
– check the ECE & SoC web pages to explore further
• Graduate programs
– both MS and Ph.D. offered separately by ECE and SoC
– combined BS/MS also offered by both ECE and SoC

www.ce.utah.edu

Computer Engineering
Curriculum
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Design and build computer systems
– software and hardware design skills
System software
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– compiler, operating system, software engineering, …
… as opposed to application software
Hardware
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Basic circuit design and testing
VLSI chip design: analog and digital
Courses exist to get you started in all of these areas
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– context can be either embedded or high performance systems electives can tilt your classes towards HW or SW

Required Courses – Premajor
Courses
• ECE 1900 Freshman Seminar
• ECE 1250 Electrical and Computer Engineering Design
• CS 1410/2420 Intro to Computer Science I and II
• Math 1210/1220 Calculus I and II
• Physics 2210 Physics for Scientists and Engineers I
• Writing 2010 Academic Writing and Research www.ce.utah.edu

Required Courses – For CE
Majors
• ECE 2240 Intro to Electric Circuits
• ECE 2280 Electronics
• CS 3500 Software Practice
• CS/ECE 3700 Fundamentals of Digital System Design
• CS/ECE 3710 Computer Design Laboratory
• CS/ECE 3810 Computer Organization
• CS/ECE 3991 Junior Seminar
• CS 4400 Computer Systems
• CS/ECE 5780 Embedded Systems
• Plus six technical electives
• Plus senior project of some sort:
– Senior Project (3992/4710)
– Senior Thesis (3992/4991/4992)
– ECE Clinic (3992/4900/4910) www.ce.utah.edu

Required Courses – For CE
Majors
• ECE 2240 Intro to Electric Circuits
• ECE 2280 Electronics
• CS 3500 Software Practice
• CS/ECE 3700 Fundamentals of Digital System Design
• CS/ECE 3710 Computer Design Laboratory
• CS/ECE 3810 Computer Organization
• CS/ECE 3991 Junior Seminar
• CS 4400 Computer Systems
• CS/ECE 5780 Embedded Systems
• Plus six technical electives
• Plus senior project of some sort:
– Senior Project (3992/4710)
– Senior Thesis (3992/4991/4992)
– ECE Clinic (3992/4900/4910) www.ce.utah.edu

CS/ECE 3710: Computer
Design Lab
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Taught in Fall semester, 3 credits
Prereqs: CS/EE 3700, CS/EE 3810
– Student groups design, build, and test their own computer system on an FPGA
– Typically a 16bit processor designed using schematics, Verilog, and Xilinx-based prototyping boards
• i.e. completely student-designed from the gates up to the software
– Bread and butter for a Computer Engineer!

3710: Xilinx Spartan3-based
Boards
•500k-gate Spartan
FPGA
• 360Kbits RAM
• 20 18x18 multipliers
•16-char, 2-line LCD
•256Mbit SDRAM
•Connectors for VGA,
PS/2, RS232,
Watch for the CS/ECE 3710 demo day
Thursday December 9, 3:40-5:00pm in MEB 3133

CE and Sustainability
• Power is a major issue in computer design
– High performance chips need a lot of power
– Power and heat are intimately related
– High performance computing takes a lot of chips
– The amount of electricity used for the world’s computers is pretty amazing...
– Think before you Google?

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Heat Dissipation
100 W light bulb has surface area of 120 cm 2
Core2 Duo dissipates 75W over ~1.4 cm 2
Core i7 Extreme is 130W over ~1.5 cm 2
• Nvidia GTX480 - 250 W over ~1.5cm
2 (~105 °
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Chips have enormous power densities
Cooling is a serious challenge
• Package spreads heat to larger surface area
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Heat sinks may increase surface area further
Fans increase airflow rate over surface area
Liquid cooling used in extreme cases ($$$)

Chip Power Density
Fortunately technology advances have avoided the red squares

Old
News!
Alternative View of “Computing Power”
Courtesy Avi Mendelson, Intel.

Alternative View of “Computing Power”
Slightly less old news…

Alternative View of “Computing Power”
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Total power used by the world’s CPUs

Alternative View of “Computing Power”
Total power used by the world’s CPUs?
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The Changing Face of
Computing
• User information appliances are increasingly mobile
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– iPad, iPhone, iWhatever
PC sales grew 2.5% last year netbook sales grew 79% iWhatever sales growth > 60% (depending on market segment)
• The “real” computing is moving to the data center
– Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace,
YouTube, cloud computing, data warehousing, etc.

Consider...
• June 2009
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Random sample showed 66,000 online players on Call of Duty Xbox live
Equivalent to the entire city of Muncie Indiana...
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Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc...
Thousands and Thousands of servers!
365/24
Total cost in US alone in 2006 just for electricity (not equipment) was around $4.5 Billion
~2% of total electricity usage in the US
AND, that’s old news! (2006)
Source: EnergyStar Report to Congress, 2007

Data Center Pollution
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100 Megawatts just for the compute & storage servers an additional 20 – 100 Megawatts for the cooling
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– ~1,000,000 ft 2
24/7 Operation – UPS requirements
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– old: 1000’s of lead acid batteries, backup generators, and 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel on hand new: flywheels and instant on generators
• Greenhouse gas impact can’t be ignored

Old Data Centers
• Racks of machines on raised flooring
• Cool air flowing up through the floor and out the ceiling

Original Google Server c1990?

Google: First
Production
Server
There were 30 of these in their first data center in
1999

Old Data Center: Good

Old Data Center: Bad

Today’s Data Centers
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50K+ cores already in play rows of racks cold and hot aisles (heat is a huge issue) – front side cold, back side hot
Communication distances in the data center mm+ to 100+ m: between components on a board, intra-rack, or inter-rack

More recent data centers
An overhead view of a Quality Technology Services data center in the Atlanta area.

Containerized Data Centers:
Google
- Servers are crammed into standard 35ft cargo containers
- Each container has power (up to 250 KWatts), networking, cooling, and over 1000 servers
- Self-contained and stackable...

Container-Style Data Centers

Container-Style Data Centers
One Google data center might have 45 containers
That’s over 60,000 servers, and power in megawatts!

Lots of Data Centers!

Sustainability?
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Data centers are multiplying!
Starting to consume a noticeable fraction of the world’s total electricity output!
– Are Facebook and Twitter worth the energy?
– Is this growth in power and resources used for computing sustainable?
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– Does YouTube give back value to offset the carbon costs of downloading all those videos?
It’s a personal choice
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– everything we do has an impact it’s not just about technology

Sustainability?
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Each Google search “costs” roughly 0.2g of CO2
In the time it takes you to do one Google search, your own computer uses more energy than
Google does answering your query.
• How can this be true?
Source: http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/

Sustainability?
• No easy answers!
– Lots of intertwined issues…
• Lots of research by Computer Engineering faculty that addresses issues of power use in computers
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Architecture, circuits, software, photonics, etc.
All apply to future data center efficiency gains you can be part of that future both by education and your choice of actions

Summary
• Exciting Opportunities in Computer
Engineering
– Challenging Curriculum
– Science, Engineering and Math plus Creativity
– Financial Rewards
– Job Satisfaction
• Help Solve some of the World’s Grand
Challenges
– Energy
– Environment
– Safety
– Productivity
– Communications