Introduction

This document provides the formatting instructions for submissions to the 49th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, 2016. 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 MICRO-49 follow the formatting and submission rules detailed below. Submissions that (grossly) 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.

An example submission (formatted using the MICRO-49 submission format) that contains the submission and formatting guidelines can be downloaded from here: Sample PDF. The contents of this document are the same as the contents of the submission instructions that appear on Submission Page (this webpage), where the paper submission site will be linked online shortly.

All questions regarding paper formatting and submission should be directed to the program chair.

Paper Preparation Instructions 
Paper Submission Instructions
Acknowledgements 

This document is derived from previous conferences, in particular MICRO 2013 and ASPLOS 2015. We thank Christos Kozyrakis and Sandhya Dwarkadas for their inputs.

Submission Site: http://micro49submit.csie.org/


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

1.  The default ordering of citations is in terms of appearance, can I can it to order by last name?
Yes, the default IEEETR ordering is in terms of appearance.  However, you can choose the ordering per your preference.  So, if you like the ordering by last name better, please feel free to use it.  However, in either case ensure that each reference explicitly states the names of all authors.  

2.  I see a lot of white space near the Title, what is that for?  And, can I remove it?
We are striving to have a submission template that is close to the camera ready version.  As you may have guessed, this space is reserved for author names and affiliation in the camera ready version, should the paper get accepted.  You can remove this space for your submission, however, should the paper get accepted you will have to find extra space to accommodate the author names and affiliation.


3.  I am using LaTex with the provided template, but prefer using Times font. Can I use the Times package?
No.  The default font with the provided template derived from ACM is Computer Modern (CM).  The Times font is about 10-15% denser compared to the default font, and can give a submission almost one extra page of content.  In order to ensure fairness for all submissions, we are insisting that the default font from the template be used instead of the Times font.


4.  I am using MS Word, and do not have CM fonts.  Can I use the default "Times New Roman" font ?
Short answer is No.  The Times New Roman font is about 10% denser compared to the CM font with the provided LaTex template.  Therefore, to ensure fairness to authors who will use the provided template, we are insisting that authors using editors other than LaTex also use a font that is similar to the default font from the ACM template.   


5.  How can I download the CM fonts for MS Word?
Thanks to Nam Sung Kim for the following instructions to download CM fonts:   You may download CM font set (True Type) from
https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/cm/ps-type1/bakoma/ttf/?lang=en

There are a bunch of font types, select cmr10.ttf (Computer Modern Roman).  Close all MS Word Windows.  Download cmrr10.ttf into any temporary directory and right click the file name.  You will see "install".  Click it and rerun word.  


6.  I tried but cannot run CM fonts on MS Word. Is there any recommendation for a font that is closest to CM fonts, and widely available with MS Word?
Try Palatino, which is the closest in terms of both space and look-and-feel to the default CM font of the template (thanks to Chris Batten for doing the font similarity analysis).  


7.  I heard you are going to do a word frequency analysis on ALL submissions to detect gross format violations.  If my paper has shorter words, will I be penalized?
The aim of the word count script is to simply detect outlier papers that have significantly more words that the median paper.   These are the candidates that will be manually checked for gross format violations.   Only after a manual check confirms that the paper has grossly violated formatting guidelines it will be dealt with separately.   The best way to avoid this trouble is to stay within the specified formatting guidelines (default font type, default font size, no tweaking the margins etc.), that way even if your paper has more words, it will still go through the normal process.


8.  What's with all-caps words not wrapping around properly in columns with this template?
This is an issue with LaTex, and not with the template (the template we provide is from the ACM camera-ready version, and we have simply commented out the author names/affiliation etc.).  The following webpage describes the problem of all-caps word-break with LaTex and how to fix it:    http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/184447/latex-doesnt-break-lines-with-capitalized-words-to-the-end-properly


Final Paper Preparation and Submission Instructions