Course covers modern computer architecture, including branch prediction, out-of-order instruction execution, cache optimizations, multi-level caches, memory and storage, cache coherence and consistency, and multi- and many-core processors.

I don't have time to give a full week-by-week review of this course, but I just felt like it was important for the greater community to know that this course isn't as awesome as it's made out to be. Context: I ended up doing good in the course, and I have taken GIOS, AOS, and HPC.

I felt the course was highly structured and well paced. The first half of the course is especially great. I loved learning about out-of-order architecture and what it means. Milos really knows how to explain the problem at hand, why is a problem worth solving and why the solution works. His enthusiasm only boosted by hunger to spend more time on the lectures.

I took it this spring and I never understood the whole point of the FAQ. why can't they fix the doc and instructions instead of explaining in FAQ what is wrong in original instructions.

I have only a few courses under my belt, but HPCA, for me, is the reference course in terms of lecture quality, and professor engagement in office hours.

I took GIOS before and loved HPCA. I felt like it filled in a lot of gaps and reinforced the material from GIOS from another perspective. Yes, there is a lot of material for the final exam and grading timeline sucked but the content itself in my opinion is very much worth it.

I'm around 4.5 years into SWE work, mostly as a full-stacker (more backend focused as of the last 2 years, but generally working in React/Angular + .NET + SQL), and I found HPCA useful as a 'vocabulary builder,' even if I'm not necessarily 'in the guts' of the hardware day-to-day (neither in my current/to-date capacity, nor for the foreseeable future). Besides the comprehensive coverage of caching and virtual memory, along with some of those one-off peripheral topics like fault tolerance, in the more 'hardware-focused' initial topics focused on out-of-order processing, I personally found that a lot of those concepts gave me insight into the terminology and concepts of database transactions and the like, which I'd say is more on the practical side than not.

HPCA is a computer architecture course. As expected, it 'plays out' like one as well. If you take a computer architecture course, that's what you get. Computer architecture itself isn't really a software topic anyway. The whole point of taking it is being exposed to hardware. Future students, please look into what computer architecture looks like (the topics, problems, etc) before deciding. Dont just go into things blindly.

It's a hardware course and not for everyone. The teaching staff is one of the best in OMSCS. Personally, I loved this course.

I took HPCA this semester. I really really enjoyed the course material and found it relevant to my job and engaging for my brain. But also I think that 80 percent of the pain in this class came from the atrocious logistics (errata on errata on errata, slow grading affecting feedback, asymmetry around expectations for exams), and the other 20 percent came from trying to understand the course material.

HPCA is very front loaded. Towards the end you will have some free time and the lessons get easier. If you are able to cruise through the first half, the second should be easier for sure.

Personally, I found the latter content to be more interesting/relevant (i.e., caches and multi-processing). The approach that the course follows is roughly going from 'micro to macro,' so you're developing 'building blocks along the way' moving into more 'big picture' topics. I think the course does a nice job covering the content overall, but it is fairly dense, and can be dull at times

I dropped and took it back. It clicked better the second time. My first time was also my bad. It's my second favorite course after DS. If you feel like you can do better, HPCA is a quite rewarding course.

Honestly this is one of the classes where whether you have cs undergrad seems like the biggest difference to me, this is not really a first course, intro to computer architecture/computer organization.

Following the same strategy as taking AOS after GIOS, I decided to follow up IHPC with HPCA. The class isn't that hard (mostly just toying around with SESC), but I bombed the final exam and got 88%, just 2% shy of getting an A. I'm still salty about it till today.

HPCA was pretty OK. I really liked the lectures, but the assignments didn't feel as rewarding as others in the program. I will say that the head TA really set the bar for what I believe is the ideal teaching assistant is. Responsive to questions on personal submissions, very very active on Ed, and seemed like he gave shit. I think sometimes that last part is hard to find; his attitude in operating the class and personalizing responses is really an example that personally discerns OMSCS from a standard MOOC for me. Alongside DC, this class was the closest I ever was to getting a B; the exams are weighed heavily and so it's a sleeper class in terms of accidentally not getting the grade you want.

HPCA was great in terms of instruction and content.