Assignment 1A: Review of two research papers (done individually)
Seyed Morteza Hosseini
Software Engineering
PAPER 1
Iain Bate and Ralf Reutemann, Worst-Case Execution Time Analysis for Dynamic Branch Predictors
- Is the paper well organized?
At first if we consider number of pages as a criteria to classify the paper that is 8 pages shows it is full paper and it’s type is conference and workshop paper. Then about skeleton of paper, it has started with title, authors and affiliations but it seems that their email address is not quite clear, in my opinion it would be better to write the emails separately like and .
The second problem is that it is not included contents, list of tables and list of figures, it has some tables and figures, so that would be better to include list of tables and also figures.
By have a brief look it has considered the total structure of skeleton except the problems that I explained above.
- Comment the following sections (if present):
- Title
In my point of view the title is clear and meaningful because it says that the paper is about worst-case execution time but for what? It says for dynamic branch predictors and also it says that the aim of the paper is to analysis worst-case execution time, on the other hand you can understand what the paper is about by reading the title. It hasn’t used any symbol or something that is not clear and needs to be clever or needs to think about that, so it is brief, meaningful and not complicated. Also if we think about putting the paper on the internet or library it should have a title that anyone can find it easily ,suppose that someone is searching about “worst-case execution time” ,so he/she will find this paper and he/she will understand from second part of title that it is the related paper that I wanted or not and also suppose that someone is searching about “dynamic branch predictors” also the results will be included this paper and I think it is not possible to summarize the title more because it we consider just the first part of the title “worst-case execution time” so it won’t say worst-case execution time about what ? I thought about shorter title but it can’t be informative if we omit some part of title or change it.
- Abstract
Number of words for abstract is 123 words that it is in rang 100-250 word, so in this case it is good. It has avoided any references and acronyms. At first it has explained the big view of the subject by saying that branch prediction mechanisms in microprocessors are commonplace and has leaded reader mind to branch prediction mechanism, then the writer has said that the problem is predictability which present by this mechanisms for real-time control systems developers.so in this step in abstract the writer has said shortly what is the paper about and what is the problem, after that it has written the result that branches are in two class either in easy-to-predict or hard-to-predict and finally writer has used this classification where it says “Based on this classification”.
- Introduction
In my point of view the first sentence of first paragraph is not as perfect as possible because it is a little long sentence and it has repetition, when reader read “In the domain of” then reader expected to read in which domain, then it has said “functional correctness of” and when reader reach to the last part of sentence he/she can forgets what was the first part of sentence about, so I believe it can be a shorter sentence. In this sentence “Existing scheduling schemes require” that would be better to say “Scheduling existing schemas require”. The positive point about introduction part is that it has shown a good background of the paper because reader can understand a total view of WCET in real-time systems. The positive point for introduction is that writer used italic font for Worst-Case Execution Time and also for the first use of WCET.At last writer has ended the introduction by give a summary of how he/she has organized the paper.
- Main section(s)
We can see use of “This is” in some part of the paper such as “This is avoided by…” in section 2,”this is considered…” in section 4.2, and “This is because the number…”in section 4.3, “This is also indicated… in section 6 and “This is because…” in conclusion. In graph write has consider the standards like caption and label for both axes, using tick marks instead of grid. In section 6 writers has used symbol but it would be better explain it. All the figures are referenced by number and have caption that explained the figures. Use of content less beginnings is another negative point in section 4.1 “There are a number of …” in section 4.3 “There are up to…””These first k…” in section 5 “There are now two…”, “There is a one …” and “These results are…”
- Summary
There is no summary for this paper.
- Conclusions
In the last paragraph of conclusion it has said suggestion for future work, it says it will extend their analysis to other control statements and then will integrated with overall analysis
- References
In referencing all reference writer has done it and also the order of mentioning title, author and so on it is correct.
- Comment on the language used in the paper.
We can say that the language is not as perfect as possible because as I written in main section comment there are some content less beginners and some long sentences in introduction but totally I believe is very good.
- General comments to the paper.
The font size is standard between 10-12. Tables have caption.
PAPER 2
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?
First thing that can be consider as a negative point is that there is no email address for author. Then the same as previous paper if we consider number of pages as a criteria to classify the paper that is 10 pages that shows it is full paper and it’s type is conference and workshop paper. Then about skeleton of paper, it has started with title, authors and affiliations. By have a brief look it has considered the total structure of skeleton except the problems that I explained above.
- Comment the following sections (if present):
- Title
In my opinion the title is a little long, it could be just “Improving Direct-Mapped Cash” or “Small Fully-Associative Cash and Prefetch Buffer for Improving Direct-Mapped Cash Performance” this one is more clear.But it hasn’t used any symbol or something that is not clear and needs to be clever or needs to think about that. Also if we think about putting the paper on the internet or library it should have a title that anyone can find it easily, but this title is long so user should consider much words to find proper result for this paper otherwise he/she will find lots of results just by searching for some word of this title.
- Abstract
Number of words for abstract is 288 words that it is not in rang 100-250 word, so in this case it is more than standard word. Another negative point is that writer has used abbreviation for the first time but it is not in italic and also has not written what are MIPS stands for? The first sentence of first paragraph is not clear and it seems is not complete. And also the whole of first paragraph couldn’t summarize the problem clearly so the first paragraph and first sentence doesn’t have good starting. It has used number of words that some part is in another line such as relatively that is like rela-tively and also tech-niques. Writer has not explained the problem in abstract, he/she just has said about Miss-Caching, Victim-Caching and Stream Buffers but nothing neither about Direct-Mapped Cache or small Fully-Associative or Prefetch Buffers that we can observe in title. It has avoided any references and acronyms.
- Introduction
In my point of view the first sentence of first paragraph is not very good because it has not said about direct-mapped cache performance it is just about cache performance. Other negative point for is that we can’t see CISC and RISC are stand for what and they are not in italic.At last writer has ended the introduction by give a summary of how he/she has organized the paper.
- Main section(s)
Structure of tables are not good, it would be better that writer used lines between columns for better shaping like first paper.In section 2 starting the first sentence is not good, has started with “Figure 2-1 shows…” it could start like “We can see range of configuration of interest in this study in figure 2-1”. In next sentence we can see “(e.g., TLB)” again what is TLB stands for and why is in the pretenses and why there is comma after e.g. We can find some content less beginners in section 3.3 “There are two factors…”, in section 2 “It is assumed to be…”, “These benchmarks are…”.We can clearly observe in figures 4-5, 3-5,3-3 and figure 4-3 that the lines are overlap and because they are in the same color reader cant not recognize them ,so it would be better to use different color in these cases. Much use of “This is” and”This” is another negative point in this paper.
- Summary
There is no summary for this paper.
- Conclusions
We can consider a positive point where there is a suggestion for future work in conclusion.
- References.
Writer hasn’t use brackets for reference numbers.
- Comment on the language used in the paper.
In comparison with paper 1 the language is weaker, it is not perfect language so I can say that the language is pretty good but not so much.
- General comments to the paper.
I think an important negative point for this paper is font size because it is smaller than standard size 8.5 and also the font is not clear so it is not easy to read.