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When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

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Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#91

Post by Gibbon1 »

creshal wrote: post #67
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the RISC vs CISC distinction a but blurry these days with both ARM and x86 adopting a lot of stuff from the other side?

It's been blurry for over 20 years at this point. ARM has had "cisc-y" complex instructions for almost as long as x86 has been splitting instructions into "risk-y" micro ops.

I think that distinction only makes sense when the hardware executes instructions directly. Like a microcode processor or one that uses jungle logic. But when you decompose optimize and cache the instruction steam on the fly, there is little meaningful difference. Offhand comments from friends more involved in that lead me to think that architecture caught academics flat footed.

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#92

Post by Cheer2171 »

onethought wrote: post #82
yuliyp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for undergraduate studies, most universities have the same tuition regardless of major (outside of lab fees for courses which need lab materials). The tuition of a particular university is more related to its prestige level than the particular majors its students choose.

I see, and its prestige comes from what? Its contribution to academia? Or its contribution to industry? Is there a prestigious university that corporates do not value degrees from highly?

Harvard has a relatively lower ranked CS program

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#93

Post by vanviegen »

mr_toad wrote: post #59
vanviegen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, though the concept of segmented memory access can be confusing and so far hasn't been very useful this century. :-)

64kb is a lot when you’re hand coding assembly. You just assemble to a .com file and pretend segments don’t exist.

Sure, but one of the fun things you'll want to do from assembler is put pixels or characters on the screen. They're memory mapped outside of segment 0, so you'll need to work with segments to do that.

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#94

Post by qarl »

onethought wrote: post #68
simonbarker87 wrote: post #62

Universities aren’t corporate training grounds. The job here is to teach you the concepts involved in CPU architecture and using the most general purpose architectures possible that have been developed over millions of person hours to cover every task possible would be a very inefficient way to do this.

> Universities aren’t corporate training grounds. So the ridiculous fees that correlate to average wages of the profession you graduate into is just a weird coincidence?

Sounds like you want a trade school.

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#95

Post by onethought »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #92
onethought wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, and its prestige comes from what? Its contribution to academia? Or its contribution to industry? Is there a prestigious university that corporates do not value degrees from highly?

Harvard has a relatively lower ranked CS program

And is prestigious for its business school… it’s basically the prototypical corporate training ground

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#98

Post by kelseyfrog »

TOMDM wrote: post #72
simonbarker87 wrote: post #62

Universities aren’t corporate training grounds. The job here is to teach you the concepts involved in CPU architecture and using the most general purpose architectures possible that have been developed over millions of person hours to cover every task possible would be a very inefficient way to do this.

Imagine teaching a legal class a fictional legal system. Philosophically there's likely great value but I doubt people wanting to practice law would favour courses with that as a focus. I agree that University courses shouldn't purely be vocational training; there's value to personal growth and pure academia that doesn't have a 1-1 overlap with the corporate world. That said I certainly appreciate that my time at Uni…

As an aside, a class about fictional legal systems sounds quite fun. Then again, I like conlangs too

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#99

Post by kelseyfrog »

jumploops wrote: post #61
DeathArrow wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren't there real architectures that are simple enough? Z80, MOS 6502, Pic, AVR?

Real hardware handles real trade-offs. For example, there are hundreds of instructions in Z80 to support various quirks of the implementation (like the duplicate register file). Sometimes less is more, and it can be freeing to know that your code compiles to a CPU with just a dozen or so instructions. It’s the same reason most universities don’t teach git, UNIX, and other industry tools. Sometimes computer science is…

And at the end of the day, students should be trained to teach themselves (including things like Git, and Unix).

I'm curious if GP (or anyone else) has been in the position of hiring entry level and finding someone who they felt didn't work out because the new hire was incapable of learning tools. Or the new hire eventually taught themselves?

Re: When teaching computer architecture, why are universities using obscure CPUs?

#100

Post by Ologn »

TOMDM wrote: post #72
simonbarker87 wrote: post #62

Universities aren’t corporate training grounds. The job here is to teach you the concepts involved in CPU architecture and using the most general purpose architectures possible that have been developed over millions of person hours to cover every task possible would be a very inefficient way to do this.

Imagine teaching a legal class a fictional legal system. Philosophically there's likely great value but I doubt people wanting to practice law would favour courses with that as a focus. I agree that University courses shouldn't purely be vocational training; there's value to personal growth and pure academia that doesn't have a 1-1 overlap with the corporate world. That said I certainly appreciate that my time at Uni…

In school I learned about MIPS architecture, which is fairly straightforward although not in use as much as the more complex x86-64 architecture.

I have worked as a programmer for years and at work have had absolutely zero times I have needed to know x86-64 commands like ADD, JMP, MOV etc.

Actually it is good I learned about other processors since once on a personal project, I compiled C code but it ran different on little endian and big endian chips. If I hadn't learned about other architectures I would have been more perplexed.

As someone else said, law schools teach about Roman law and other forms of law not immediately vocationally valuable. Also - I learned something about non-standard computer architecture as an undergrad, and many people go on to become programmers with a BSCS, lawyers typically go on to get a JD after doing undergrad.

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