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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?

#111

Post by outop »

derlvative wrote: post #89
outop wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many law courses spend time on Roman law, and on archaic English law.

Roman law and old English law were actually used in real legal systems, and they are studied because they are the basis for the legal system we use today

I disagree with your second statement. I think they're studied because they are simple working legal systems which are easier to reason about than modern ones.

Arguably these legal systems are the conceptual basis for our modern law system because they are used pedagogically in this way.

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

#112

Post by oalae5niMiel7qu »

Dr4kn wrote: post #36
musicale wrote: post #19

IP issues. As I understand it, Harris and Harris changed their textbook from ARM to RISC-V because of IP issues and ARM's lawyers. The MIPS architecture was also sabotaged by IP issues. As a result, architecture students are learning how to use and implement RISC-V. Thanks ARM.

It's amazing how a lot of companies just forget how they got so big. If people can learn for cheap or at least very cheaply with your stuff, then they are going to use it when making money. Restricting teaching with it or charging students the high corporate fees are just going to backfire in the long run. People will learn with whatever is cheap or free . Davinci Resolve is getting more popular, because it's "free"…

This is also how Linux became the server OS of choice for most companies, while Windows NT remained a niche product only found at a certain kind of company. And before that, easy availability of UNIX to students made it the default OS of any high-end computer throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s.

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

#113

Post by throwaway2016a »

glitchc wrote: post #9

Modern CPUs are too complicated to teach in a semester. Plus, the course is meant to teach how a CPU works at a conceptual level, not train students for x86 assembly programming.

I had an "Assembly" course in my undergrad that taught x86, we managed in in semester. But it was a separate class from Architecture (and had Architecture I as a pre-requisite). Granted it didn't get into the hyper-optimized / specialized instructions.

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

#114

Post by throwaway2016a »

Anecdotally, in my architecture class (granted a decade and a half ago) we had to implement a 4-bit microcontroller from scratch. Using an actual bread board, wires, and primitive chips. We implemented those instructions from scratch given binary input switches and a manual clock. It was a simple instruction set (just ADD, SUB, STORE, RETRIEVE, SHIFT, that sort of thing) but we had to learn everything in depth.

I feel in addition to other valid comments like IP, smaller scope, etc. the simpler instruction set may have something to do with how the newer instruction sets hold your hand a lot. I always thought the point of architecture was to have to learn how things like half-adders, shift registers, and all those work and if the instruction set does it all for you, what's the point?

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

#115

Post by scrubs »

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."

Oh c'mon. By the reverse stupid logic corporations aren't educational centers to train newbies on x86 either.

General/abstract is fine and one day one time some how some way make contact with practical too.

Avoiding dumb extremes might be why MIT has a good reputation in stem. It's practical built on solid (often abstract) fundamentals

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

#116

Post by KingOfCoders »

musicale wrote: post #30
KingOfCoders wrote: post #25

OT Does anyone know a nice TTL computer with leds to register content that I can buy soldered?

Not what you're looking for I know, but I am reminded of: https://monster6502.com And: http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html (HN law mandates at least one 6502 post per week. Preferably more.) And lest we forget (not 6502, not commercial, but some TTL): https://www.homebrewcpuring.org/ringhome.html

Would love a monsterz80.com :-)

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

#117

Post by DerekL »

JohnBooty wrote: post #48
don-code wrote: post #3

Much as I also have never understood universities teaching to "teaching" architectures (DLX), or "teaching" languages (Eiffel - luckily removed from our curriculum before I started), at the same time I did not land a job based on having learned "practical" architectures 68k or MIPS either.

A lot of my compsci education was in Pascal, which was not exactly a real-world language (though I guess Delphi had a dedicated niche for many years) I actually think this was probably better than learning with real-world languages? I believe it taught me to be a computer programmer. Not a Java guy or a C guy or a whatever guy. I think that was super valuable. For assembly language we learned VAX assembly, which was…

In the 1970's and '80's, Pascal actually was commonly used for real work.
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