This document is intended to provide instructions for submissions to the IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA-27), Feb 27 – May 3, 2021 in Seoul, South Korea. This document provides guidelines that authors should follow when submitting papers to the conference. This format is derived from the IEEE conference template IEEEtran.cls file with the objective of keeping the submission similar to the final version, i.e., the IEEEtran.cls template will also be used for the camera-ready version.

Submission Site: https://hpca2021-seoul.hotcrp.com
Industry Session Submission Site: https://hpca2021industry-seoul.hotcrp.com
LaTeX Template: HPCA-27 LaTeX Template
Abstract Submission Deadline: July 24th, 2020
Full-Paper Submission Deadline: July 31st, 2020

Introduction

This document provides instructions for submitting papers to the IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), 2021. In an effort to respect the efforts of reviewers and in the interest of fairness to all prospective authors, we request that all submissions to HPCA 2021 follow the formatting and submission rules detailed below. Submissions that violate these instructions may not be reviewed, at the discretion of the program chair, in order to maintain a review process that is fair to all potential authors. All questions regarding paper formatting and submission should be directed to the program chair.

Format Highlights

Here are the format highlights in a nutshell:

• Paper must be submitted in printable PDF format.
• Text must be in a minimum 10pt Times font.
• Papers must be at most 11 pages (not including references) in a two-column format.
• No page limit for references.
• Each reference must specify all authors, i.e., no el al.

Paper Evaluation Objectives

The committee will make every effort to judge each submitted paper on its own merits. There will be no target acceptance rate. We expect to accept a wide range of papers with appropriate expectations for evaluation — while papers that build on significant past work with strong evaluations are valuable, papers that open new areas with less rigorous evaluation are equally welcome and especially encouraged. We also acknowledge the wide range of evaluation methodologies including modeling, simulation, prototyping, experimental implementation, real product evaluation, etc.

Paper Preparation Instructions

Paper Formatting

Papers must be submitted in printable PDF format and should contain a maximum of 11 pages of single-spaced two-column text, not including references. You may include any number of pages for references, but see below for more instructions. If you are using LaTeX to typeset your paper, then we suggest that you use this template. If you use a different software package to typeset your paper, then please adhere to the guidelines given in the table below.

Field	Value
File format	PDF
Page limit	11 pages, not including references
Paper size	US Letter 8.5in x 11in
Top margin	1in
Bottom margin	1in
Left margin	0.75in
Right margin	0.75in
Body	2-column, single-spaced
Space between columns	0.25in
Line spacing (leading)	11pt
Body font	10pt, Times
Abstract font	10pt, Times
Section heading font	12pt, bold
Subsection heading font	10pt, bold
Caption font	9pt (minimum), bold
References	8pt, no page limit, list all authors’ names

Please ensure that you include page numbers with your submission. This makes it easier for the reviewers to refer to different parts of your paper when they provide comments. Please ensure that your submission has a banner at the top of the title page, similar to this document, which contains the submission number and the notice of confidentiality. If using the template, just replace ‘NaN’ with your submission number.

Content

Reviewing will be double blind (no author list); therefore, please do not include any author names on any submitted documents except in the space provided on the submission form. You must also ensure that the metadata included in the PDF does not give away the authors. If you are improving upon your prior work, refer to your prior work in the third person and include a full citation for the work in the bibliography. For example, if you are building on your own prior work in the papers [2]–[4], you would say something like: ”While the authors of [2]–[4] did X, Y, and Z, this paper additionally does W, and is therefore much better.” Do NOT omit or anonymize references for blind review. There is one exception to this for your own prior work that appeared in IEEE CAL, arXiv, workshops without archived proceedings, etc. as discussed later in this document.

Figures and Tables: Ensure that the figures and tables are legible. Please also ensure that you refer to your figures in the main text. Many reviewers print the papers in gray-scale. Therefore, if you use colors for your figures, ensure that the different colors are highly distinguishable in gray-scale.

References: There is no length limit for references. Each reference must explicitly list all authors of the paper. Papers not meeting this requirement will be rejected. Since there is no length limit for the number of pages used for references, there is no need to save space here.

Paper Submission Instructions

Guidelines for Determining Authorship

IEEE guidelines dictate that authorship should be based on a substantial intellectual contribution. It is assumed that all authors have had a significant role in the creation of an article that bears their names. In particular, the authorship credit must be reserved only for individuals who have met each of the following conditions:

1. Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article;
2. Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content; and
3. Approved the final version of the article as accepted for publication, including references.

A detailed description of the IEEE authorship guidelines and responsibilities is available here. Please keep these guidelines in mind while determining the author list of your paper.

Declaring Authors

Declare all the authors of the paper upfront. Addition/removal of authors once the paper is accepted will have to be approved by the program chair, since it potentially undermines the goal of eliminating conflicts for reviewer assignment.

Areas and Topics

Authors should indicate specific topics covered by the paper on the submission page. If you are unsure whether your paper falls within the scope of the conference, please check with the program chair — HPCA is a broad, multidisciplinary conference and encourages new topics.

Declaring Conflicts of Interest

Authors must register all their conflicts on the paper submission site. Conflicts are needed to ensure appropriate assignment of reviewers. If a paper is found to have an undeclared conflict that causes a problem OR if a paper is found to declare false conflicts in order to abuse or ‘game’ the review system, the paper may be rejected.

Please declare a conflict of interest with the following people for any author of your paper. A conflict occurs in the following cases:

1. Between advisor and advisee forever.
2. Between family members forever.
3. Between people who have collaborated in the last 5 years. This collaboration can consist of a joint research or development project, a joint paper, or when there is direct funding from the potential reviewer (as opposed to company funding) to an author of the paper. Coparticipation in professional activities, such as tutorials or studies, is not cause for conflict. When in doubt, the author should check with the Program Chair.
4. Between people from same institution or who were in the same institution in the last 5 years.
5. Between people whose relationship prevents the reviewer from being objective in his/her assessment.

‘Service’ collaborations, such as co-authoring a report for a professional organization, serving on a program committee, or co-presenting tutorials, do not themselves create a conflict of interest. Co-authoring a paper that is a compendium of various projects with no true collaboration among the projects does not constitute a conflict among the authors of the different projects. On the other hand, there may be others not covered by the above with whom you believe a COI exists, for example, an ongoing collaboration which has not yet resulted in the creation of a paper or proposal. Please report such COIs; however, you may be asked to justify them. Please be reasonable. For example, you cannot declare a COI with a reviewer just because that reviewer works on topics similar to or related to those in your paper. The program chair may contact co-authors to explain a COI whose origin is unclear.

Most reviews will be solicited among the members of the PC and the ERC, but other members from the community may also write reviews. Please declare all your conflicts (not just restricted to the PC and ERC) on the submission form. When in doubt, contact the program chair.

ArXiv Submissions

Authors may submit their work to HPCA 2021 for publication even if the paper has been submitted to or currently appears on arXiv. However, please do recognize that arXiv submissions cause serious issues with the double-blind review process. The PC chair has already advised the PC/ERC members not to consider arXiv submissions in their evaluation. However, we encourage the authors to reduce the possibility of their name being disclosed. While there is no magical solution to hide from the power of web search in locating arXiv papers, we encourage authors to avoid substantially similar titles abstract etc., to reduce this match.

Concurrent Submissions and Workshops

By submitting a manuscript to HPCA 2021, the authors guarantee that the manuscript has not been previously published or accepted for publication in a substantially similar form in any conference, journal, or the archived proceedings of a workshop (e.g., in the ACM/IEEE digital libraries) — see exceptions below. The authors also guarantee that no paper that contains significant overlap with the contributions of the submitted paper will be under review for any other conference or journal or an archived proceedings of a workshop during the HPCA 2021 review period. Violation of any of these conditions will lead to rejection.

The only exceptions to the above rules are for the authors’ own papers in (1) workshops without archived proceedings such as in the ACM/IEEE digital libraries (or where the authors chose not to have their paper appear in the archived proceedings), or (2) venues such as IEEE CAL or arXiv where there is an explicit policy that such publication does not preclude longer conference submissions. In all such cases, the submitted manuscript may ignore the above work to preserve author anonymity. This information must, however, be provided on the submission form — the program chair will make this information available to reviewers if it becomes necessary to ensure a fair review. As always, if you are in doubt, it is best to contact program chairs.

Finally, the ACM/IEEE Plagiarism Policies cover a range of ethical issues concerning the misrepresentation of other works or one’s own work. See http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism and http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/plagiarism_FAQ.html.

Acknowledgements

This document is derived from previous conferences, in particular ISCA 2020.