HPCA 2019 Guidelines for Submissions

This document provides guidelines for authors submitting to the 25th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA-25), 2019. The format is derived from the ACM sig-alternate.cls file, and is used with an objective of keeping the submission version similar to the camera ready version.

Submission Site: https://hpca19.hotcrp.com/

Industry Session Submission Site: https://hpca19industry.hotcrp.com

Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday July 27th, 11:59 pm EDT

Paper Submission Deadline: Friday August 3rd, 11:59 pm EDT

Latex Template: HPCA-25 Latex Template

Sample PDF: HPCA-25 Sample PDF

HPCA 2019 Call for Papers: HPCA-25 Call For Papers

For problems with the submission site, please contact one of the submission co-chairs: Anirban Nag anirban@cs.utah.edu, Surya Narayanan surya@cs.utah.edu, Karl Taht taht@cs.utah.edu.

Introduction

This document provides the formatting instructions for submissions to the 25th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture, 2019 (HPCA-25). 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-25 follow the formatting and submission rules detailed below. Submissions that (grossly) violate these instructions may not be reviewed, at the discretion of the program co-chairs, in order to maintain a review process that is fair to all potential authors.

An example submission (formatted using the HPCA-25 submission format) that contains the submission and formatting guidelines can be downloaded from here: Sample PDF.

All questions regarding paper formatting and submission should be directed to the program co-chairs using the email address hpca19@cs.utah.edu.

Format Highlights

  • Paper must be submitted in printable PDF format.
  • Text must be in a minimum 10pt (not 9pt) font.
  • Template provides "Computer Modern" font as default font. Authors could also use "Times" font for submission.
  • Papers must be at most 11 pages, not including references, in two-column format.
  • There is no page limit for references.
  • New policy this year: See details below on submitting an optional second pdf with highlighted changes.

Optional Second PDF for Resubmitted Papers

For submissions that were previously submitted to other conferences, we strongly encourage authors to take into account feedback received from previous reviews. There is a reasonable probability that an HPCA-25 submission may be assigned to reviewers that have seen earlier versions of the same paper. To ease the reviewing burden, and to help authors highlight the improvements to their paper, authors can optionally submit a second pdf that highlights the major changes to their work, relative to prior submissions. We anticipate that this process will hold authors and reviewers more accountable, and perhaps help reduce any pre-conceived bias that a reviewer may have against the paper.

  • The second pdf will not be made visible to reviewers by default. If a reviewer believes they have reviewed an earlier version of the paper, they will email the PC Chairs and ask for the second pdf.
  • The second pdf can not introduce new content. It must be identical to the HPCA-25 submission, but can use color to highlight specific text/captions that are different from prior versions of the paper. A 100-word appendix may be included to summarize and provide context for the major changes.
  • In latex, text can be highlighted using \hl{ ... }. The submission template already includes the necessary latex packages color and soul. To remove the highlight, simply set the highlight color to white (example in the latex template).
  • Authors have the flexibility to decide what significant changes they want to highlight to a reviewer. Obviously, authors will want to draw attention to all prior show-stopping concerns that have been addressed in the new submission.
  • The second pdf upload deadline is also at 11:59pm EDT on Friday August 3rd. For those planning on working on their paper until the last minute, a one hour grace period is being offered.
  • In case of any questions about this new policy, please feel free to email the PC chairs at hpca19@cs.utah.edu.

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. Given the wide range of topics covered by HPCA, every effort will be made to find expert reviewers.

Paper Preparation Instructions


Paper Formatting

Paper may 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 recommend that you use the template available here: HPCA-25 Latex Template. The template uses the "Computer Modern" font as default font. Authors could also use Times font for submission.

If you are using a different software package to typeset your paper, then please adhere to the guidelines mentioned in Table 1. Please avoid squeezing out more space by specifically opting for a narrower font.

Table 1: Formatting Guidelines
Field Value
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
Separation between columns 0.25in
Body font 10pt
Abstract font 10pt (regular font)
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 one, which contains the submission number and the notice of confidentiality. If using the template, just replace XXX with your submission number.

Content

Reviewing will be double-blind; 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 [1, 2, 3], you would say something like: "While the authors of [1, 2, 3] 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, 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. Authors of NSF proposals should be familiar with this requirement. Knowing all authors of related work will help find the best reviewers. 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. Per these guidelines, it is not acceptable to award honorary authorship or gift authorship. 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 these areas on the submission form as well as specific topics covered by the paper for optimal reviewer match. If you are unsure whether your paper falls within the scope of HPCA, please check with the program chair -- HPCA is a broad, multidisciplinary conference and encourages new topics.

Conflict Responsibilities

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:

  • Your Ph.D. advisor(s), post-doctoral advisor(s), Ph.D. students, and post-doctoral advisees, forever.
  • Family relations by blood or marriage, or their equivalent, forever (if they might be potential reviewers).
  • People with whom you have collaborated in the last FIVE years, including:
    • co-authors of accepted/rejected/pending papers.
    • co-PIs on accepted/rejected/pending grant proposals.
  • Funders (decision-makers) of your research grants, and researchers whom you fund.
  • People (including students) who shared your primary institution(s) in the last FIVE years.
  • Other relationships, such as close personal friendship, that you think might tend to affect your judgement or be seen as doing so by a reasonable person familiar with the relationship.

"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 PC Chair may contact co-authors to explain a COI whose origin is unclear.

We hope to draw most reviewers from the PC and the ERC, but others from the community may also write reviews. Please declare all your conflicts (not just restricted to the PC and ERC). When in doubt, contact the program co-chairs.

Concurrent Submissions and Workshops

By submitting a manuscript to HPCA-25, 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 digital library) -- 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-25 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 digital library (or where the authors chose not to have their paper appear in the archived proceedings), or (2) venues such as IEEE CAL 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 PC 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 the program co-chairs.

Authors are not barred from uploading their papers to arxiv and similar sites. But please note that such efforts may compromise the double-blind review process, so please exercise care when discussing your submission in public forums. On a related note, unrefereed on-line pre-prints are not assumed to constitute "prior work" -- in other words, reviewers cannot penalize an HPCA submission because it does not cite a pre-print with limited visibility.

Finally, we also note that the IEEE Plagiarism Guidelines cover a range of ethical issues concerning the misrepresentation of other works or one's own work.

Acknowledgements

This document is derived from previous conferences, in particular HPCA 2017 and 2018.