Paper Reviews

An important part of this course is reading research papers. There are two reasons for this: (1) only by reading research papers will you thoroughly understand many of the algorithms and techniques that we will talk about in class and (2) reading research papers properly takes practice, and is an important skill to develop, especially for those of you that go on to a research career.

Logistics

Throughout the semester we will discuss several research papers. For each discussion, two students will serve as the discussion leaders. Each student will get do to serve in this role once. On the remainder of the weeks, you will be expected to read the paper, submit a paper review, and attend the class prepared to discuss the paper.

Sign up on Slack (see #paper_review channel), as a group of 2, to lead a paper discussion on a certain day.

Class Participants

  • Prepare a paper review as described below.
  • Submit the paper review to jgoeders@byu.edu 24 hours before the class.
  • Attend class prepared to discuss the paper.

Discussion Leaders

  • You don’t need to complete a paper review.
  • You will receive the paper reviews on Slack 24 hours before class.
  • You should read over the paper reviews and prepare slides to lead a class discussion.
  • The class discussion will be 35-40 minutes long, and should include:
    • An overview of the paper, discussing key technical contributions, making sure to explain technical details that classmates may not understand (15 min max)
    • Lead a discussion about students’ critiques of the paper. Discuss the pros and cons of the technical work. Include in your slides points of critique or support from student paper reviews, and lead a class discussion about the merit of these comments. (15 minutes)
    • Lead a discussion about the style of the paper, and what elements of the paper students liked or did not like about how the paper was presented or organized. (5-10 minutes)

Remember: You are primarily a discussion moderator. Don’t talk too much, and make sure to engage the class in discussion. You should not be lecturing for the entire time.

Papers

Papers will be posted here as the class proceeds.

See the schedule for the paper review due dates.

PAPERS ARE DUE 24 HOURS BEFORE CLASS

# Paper
1 Dries Vercruyce, Elias Vansteenkiste and Dirk Stroobandt, “CRoute: A Fast High-quality Timing-driven Connection-based FPGA Router”, FCCM 2019.
2 Kevin Murray, Sheng Zhong, Vaughn Betz, “AIR: A Fast but Lazy Timing-Driven FPGA Router”, ASP-DAC 2020.
3 Andrew Gunter, Steven Wilton, “A Machine Learning Approach for Predicting the Difficulty of FPGA Routing Problems”, FCCM 2023.
4 M. An, G. Steffen and V. Betz, “Speeding Up FPGA Placement: Parallel Algorithms and Methods,” FCCM, 2014.
5 Licheng Gui et al., “RapidStream: Parallel Physical Implementation of FPGA HLS Designs”, FPGA 2022.
6 Nachiket Kapre and Jan Gray, “Hoplite: Building Austere Overlay NoCs for FPGAs”, FPL 2015.

Paper Review Contents

Include the following in your paper review (in marked sections):

  1. Technical Contributions: (30%)
    • What are the contributions of the paper?
    • What are the key technical ideas and results?
    • What technical ideas did you not understand and would like to see discussed in class?
  2. Critical Review: (50%)
    • What are the technical strengths and weaknesses of the paper? Discuss several positive and negative aspects of the paper.
    • Try to provide non-trivial arguments, including some points not brought up by the authors. Do not summarize the paper (that’s what the abstract is for); rather, evaluate the merits of the work done by the authors as presented in the paper. You could comment on things like:
      • importance of the problem being solved
      • soundness/correctness of approach
      • appropriateness of methodology
      • quality, completeness or repeatability of results
  3. Style: (20%)
    • What did you like about the paper style that helped you be convinced of impact and correctness of the work?
    • Was there something in the paper you would like to use in your own future writing?
    • Was there something in the paper that you would like to avoid in your own future writing?

Your review should be 0.5-1 page, assuming 11pt font, single spaced, 1” margins. Quality is more important than quantity.

Presentation Evaluation

You will be evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Organization and flow of presentation.
  • Effectiveness at summarizing the paper, identifying key material, and providing meaningful substance without going into unnecessary details.
  • Effectiveness at organizing students’ critical review items, and leading class discussion on these items.
  • Keeping audience engaged, and soliciting participation from the entire audience.
  • Ability to address students’ questions and concerns.
  • Appropriate length of time.

Late Policy

Because we discuss the paper reviews as a class, no late submissions will be accepted. Please make sure to get your paper reviews in on time!