ECG 702 Term Project Guidelines
The term project is for an
individual or a group of two students to perform original research on a topic
in the field of Interconnection Networks. Possible topics include survey of a
research area, extension of an existing work, and exploration of new ideas for
a specific topic. All projects will include a project proposal, progress
report, presentation, and final report. The research projects will be graded on
how well you define your problem, survey previous work, design and conduct your
experiments, and present your results.
Since a survey paper is “safer”
than a research project, the survey paper will be expected to meet a higher
standard of completeness and perform a more extensive analysis of existing
literature. A survey project report should contain (1) a summary of work in an
area, including extensive references, (2) a statement of opinions of others for
and against various options (with references), and (3) a conclusion given your opinions
on the strengths and weaknesses of arguments presented above. Survey projects
will be graded based on the completeness of your survey, the accuracy of your
summaries, the support you give for your opinions, and the quality of your
presentation.
Project
Proposal (Due Wednesday, Oct. 16) (15%)
Each project group should write a one to two page proposal
which includes:
- A
description of the topic
- A
statement of why the topic is interesting or important
- A
description of the methods to be used for evaluating the proposed ideas
(for research projects)
- A list
of resources that you plan to use to complete the project
- References
to at least three relevant papers that you have obtained and read on this
topic. You can pick the papers from the citation of the textbook and
journals and conferences with publications in Interconnection Networks,
including IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel
and Distributed Systems, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, IEEE
Computer, IEEE Micro., Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing,
Journal of Interconnection Networks, Proceedings of the International
Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), International Symposium on
High-Performance Computer Architecture, IEEE/ACM International Symposium
on Microarchitecture (MICRO), IEEE/ACM Networks-on-Chip Symposium (NOCS), International
Symposium on Computer Arithmetic (ARITH), International Conference on
Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), etc. Most of the journals and conference proceedings are
available at Lied library. You can refer to IEEE Digital Library
or ACM
Digital Library for publications by IEEE or ACM. In the list of
reading materials, you may find some papers you can start with.
Progress
Report (Due Wednesday, Nov. 13) (25%)
Each team should write a two page status report. This report
should clearly describe the progress you are making and any difficulties that
you have encountered so far. If you discover any modifications that you need to
make to your original proposal, you should describe these as well.
Final
Report (Due Wednesday, Dec. 11) (60%)
The final report should be
formatted following the IEEE publication guideline.
It should include an abstract, introduction, body, conclusion, and a list of
reference. High-quality reports will be considered for submission to
conferences or journals. The abstract should summarize the contributions of the
report in 150-200 words. The total length of the report should be equivalent to
10 to 15 pages at single-spaced 12-point font.
Project
Presentation (Wednesday, Dec. 4) (10% in total grade)
Each group will be given 20 minutes in class to present your
project and your results. Your presentation should include introduction, survey
of existing work, strengths and weaknesses of these work, new approach (if
any), performance evaluation. Each member of the group should present in the
group’s presentation.
Project
Topics
You are encouraged to come up with your own topic. Ideally,
the topic will be related to your interests. Following are some possible
research project topics:
- Study
of cost-effective hierarchical interconnection networks (such as concentrated
mesh, 3D flattened butterfly, etc.) for Networks-on-Chips (NoCs) and
related switching and routing schemes.
- Study
of efficient multicasting/fault-tolerant routing algorithms for various
interconnection networks used in NoCs.
- Study
of efficient IP scheduling and mapping schemes for 3D NoCs.
- Study
of efficient power/thermal management schemes for 2D/3D NoCs.
- Study
of blocking probability of adaptive routing schemes for a specific interconnection
network.
- Study
of fast routing algorithms for optimum strictly
nonblocking photonic switching networks.
Following are some possible survey project topics:
- Survey
of 3D interconnection networks used in NoCs and compare these networks in
terms of their network and power performance.
- Survey
of optical interconnection networks and their applications in on-chip and
off-chip interconnects.
- Survey
of deadlock avoidance/recovery schemes used in NoCs.
- Survey
of sorting networks and real implementation of these networks.
- Survey
of selection networks and real implementation of these networks.