Lecture 14Put It All Together at Work

Graduate Computer ArchitectureFall 2005

Shih-Hao HungDept. of Computer Science and

Information EngineeringNational Taiwan University

Hopefully…• In the future, you know how to apply

what you have learned in this class:– Write good software– Design a good system– Analyze a complicated system– Understand other’s work

My Advices• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

– Even a Ph.D. shouldn’t confine himself/herself in an Ivory Tower by just working on very narrow topics

– Who knows what will be the hot topics 5 years from now?

• Always look at the big picture• Try to connect the big picture with your

job functions.

Life after Graduation• Repeat

– Find a good company– Find a good manager– Find a good team– Find your place in a team– Find your place in the company– Find your company’s place in the business– Find your heart– Find important things in your life

My Work Experience (1)• Find a good company

– Sun Micro was among the top in Year 2000• Find a good manager

– I was lucky• Find a good team

– Top talents may not work well together– Chemistry to bind a team– Need all kinds of skills– Share the same goal

My Work Experience (2)• Find your place in a team

– Technical leader– Special expert– Work horse

• Find your place in the company– Building up your credit– Become an expert in certain areas– Promotion and visibility will come

• Find your company’s place in the business– Will Sun rise again?– Sun needs to win with vision and technology

My Work Experience (3)• Find your heart

– To be or not to be a manager– Career goals– Rewards– Challenges– Mental health

• Find important things in your life– Family– Friendship– Have a life

Career Brief• [2000.9] Join Sun’s Performance and Availability Engineering Group as a MTS• [2000-2002] Gigabit Network performance characterization on Sun servers• [2001.01-2001.03] Performance analysis of Sun Crypto Accelerator I• [2001-2002] Performance analysis of TPC-W benchmark on Sun servers• [2001-2003] Performance tuning of Sun Crypto Accelerator 1000• [2001.5] Internet bubble burst• [2001.9.11] 911 Attack, Stock all time low• [2002.4] World record server-side SSL performance• [2002.8] Promoted to Staff Engineer• [2002-2004] Performance tuning of Sun Crypto Accelerator 4000• [2003-2004] SSL & IPsec performance on Sun servers• [2003] SSL performance: competitive analysis• [2004] Contributing to Solaris Crypto Framework• [2004] Jupiter: Next-generation low-cost CMT processor w/SSL & XML acceler

ation• [2005.2] Left Sun to join NTU

Work Style• Work smart

– Do useful work– Put useful work together– Methodology– Organize and present results– Expand your expertise and domain knowledge– Get work done with help from people

• Work with people– Learn from people– Exchange favors– Responsive– Respect– Trust– People skill– Resolve/accept political issues

Project Example• Sun Crypto Accelerator 4000

– Participated in early development phase– Specific performance requirement– Complicated HW design– Complicated performance issues– Experiences from SCA1 & SCA1000– Constantly changing firmware & software– Remote collaboration– Work from application to driver

Conclusion• Over the last 50+ years computer architecture is a

rapidly changing– Science and engineering – Hardware and software

• Consider this a historical course which took you to visit the key architecture concepts and designs in the history of computers.

• The more you know, the more tools in your box when you need to solve a problem. No need to invent new wheels.

• What is also important is to learn the way problems were solved. Your success at work has a lot depend on your problem solving skills and methodology.