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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?

#101

Post by NoGravitas »

aeldidi wrote: post #17

My local university used to teach MIPS, and as of some years ago they’ve switched to RISC-V. The final assignment at the time I took it was to write a program which compiles a subset of ARM machine code into RISC-V machine code, which was a challenging but so rewarding thing for a younger me to cut my teeth on. It was a surprisingly modern class too. The in-class material was learning about pipelining, instruction/me…

We learned MIPS assembly as a small part of the computer architecture class at my university, in the first half of the 90s. It makes sense that RISC-V is the modern choice.

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

#102

Post by stusmall »

If my college degree was focused only on technologies that were popular at the time, it would be worth significantly less today. Instead it focused on the concepts and theory that are timeless. When picking an architecture to teach on the goal is to get the best one to give the quickest and firmest understanding of these concepts. With that the right answer is more likely to be something obscure, outdated or even fictional.

The times I've had to write assembly in industry, it has only once been on a mainstream, modern ISA. More often than it is on something that would have never been taught in university (MSP430, PIC18 or other microcontrollers). The theory and concepts I learned in college made those easier to pick up.

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

#103

Post by rhelz »

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…

> legal class

I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about computer architecture?

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

#104

Post by Pet_Ant »

Almondsetat wrote: post #52

Many universities use LEGv8 to teach computer architectures, which is a more didactic version of the ARMv8 ISA. LEGv8 was developed as part of the semi-standard textbook in Computer architectures which is the David Patterson's one. The problem of course is that this ISA is completely fictional and code written for it cannot be ran anywhere. Fortunately ARM themselves have developed and made available a web-based simu…

I do find this exciting about RISC-V is that we might have something that is both simple and teachable, and with enough extensions usable. I first learned to program on an obscure Pascal-derivative language, but now you can start with Python, Java, or even C which are both teachable and usable. So it'd be nice if we could teach architecture with something that served as on ramp to marketable skills.

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

#105

Post by victorbjorklund »

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…

I went to law school. One of the mandatory courses was on roman law. Another was on philosophy of law. Both had zero practical direct value for a working lawyer.

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

#106

Post by glitchc »

docandrew wrote: post #39
glitchc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I learned Eiffel. It's a nice language. I wish we had pre-conditions and post-conditions in modern procedural language.

We do - Ada!

I should definitely look more into Ada.

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

#107

Post by jcarrano »

We started out with the Motorola HC11, I'm guessing because someone used it a lot on the past and no one wants to redo all the course material. We used a simulator called "Wookie".

Despite being somewhat obscure, it has the advantage that it is easy to understand while also being real. We had a board where you could hook into the address and data busses, since the memory and busses were external. Also, it has a simple bus, as opposed to an ARM chip with AHB, APB, etc, and no pipelining.

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

#108

Post by singleshot_ »

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…

This describes every American law school of which I am aware, where students learn a generalized version of the law through Restatements and study of salient appeals courts decisions, both state and federal.

Barring concerted effort, a U.S. law student will not leave school with detailed knowledge of any particular jurisdiction.

Then graduates take the bar, where they are more or less quizzed on 18th century English common law, because most states use a bar exam that is not specific to each state’s law.

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

#110

Post by jecel »

fsmv wrote: post #16

You can teach 8086 assembly which is still compatible with modern x86 and it only has like 20 instructions. It's lots of fun I made a whole bootable text editor an assembler and an almost finished lisp interpreter too.

I think the 8086 has 117 instructions. It is a good example of a CISC, after all, with instructions like the one capable of copying a C string: REPNZ MOVSB.

While I have seen many claims that the 8086 has more than 20 thousand instructions that is very silly. By the same criteria any RISC with fixed 32 bit instructions would have 4 billion of them.

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