Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

The title is very ambitious. This is not really building a computer from first principles, there are some steps skipped. This is a high-level overview of modern computers, it's worth noting there's a lot of depth to be explored.

Everyone agrees custom languages are not great. They don't really give you a lot of transferable skills, it would be cool if you really implemented C or Lisp, and did it in Verilog or VHDL.

This style of course may suit a particular type of student, who enjoys a broad overview or wants to specialize in only one area. Personally my preferred way to learn is in depth, serially, so this doesn't really apply to me. My degree also covered most of these topics anyways, so picking wasn't really a problem. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone.

A lot of comments say 'a motivated student will just learn that on their own'. This material is a good jumping off point, but (once again, in my experience) the theory is the hardest stuff to learn on your own. I would rather do the 'dull' stuff in class, then teach myself how to make games out of it (as opposed to being taught how to make games, and having to learn best practices, design techniques, theory).

Some commenters were also saying that this is unique, or it should be taught everywhere. It is unique in that it's a single, very dense class, but the material is definitely available elsewhere, in a format that I find easier to learn from. I wanted to make it clear that, if this is interesting, I think a computer engineering degree will let you learn the same stuff, but in much greater detail. Taking this class first might motivate some people, but I would find it redundant.

In conclusion, this is great, but it's not for everyone. If you like all the content but you're disappointed by how brief it seems, try computer engineering.

edit: I forgot, a lot of comments implied that understanding this material helped them do higher level programming. It's certainly cool to have a soup-to-nuts knowledge, but I still don't really understand how it could help without the topics that actually impact performance like caching, pipelining, I/O, etc.

I don't think the problem is that the end result isn't a computer (it certainly sounds like it is), but that the computer only runs in the provided simulator, and is written in a custom HDL designed to make this project relatively simple. The simulator itself ignores a bunch of complexities around timing that a commercial one (like ModelSim) would consider.

Personally I haven't done this class, but I'd be curious to know whether the students design the control unit and data path themselves. I know that was a giant pain in the ass when I did it for a gimped RISC processor (as you described).

There's an old joke that the difference between computer science and computer engineering is that in the former one assumes infinite speed and infinite storage. Understanding that there are limitations, and why they exist and to what degree, is important.

As already noted, it demystifies the surrounding "magic". There's a confidence and freedom which comes from knowing that nothing in the system is beyond you.

My education indeed went from "sand to Skyrim", from basic physics & chemistry to electrochemistry to discrete electronics to quantum mechanics to semiconductor doping to hand-layout of integrated circuits to automated layout of ICs (writing the automators, that is) to hardware languages (acronym escapes me) to logic to gate theory to basic CPU design to machine language to assembler to compiler design to C/APL/Pascal/Prolog/Lisp/C++ to OS design discrete math to graph theory to raster graphics to 3D graphics, and a bunch of other stuff throughout. It's indespensible because I can look at any problem and grok what's happening all the way down to silicon, able to work with someone writing Windows printer drivers one day and proving a linked crossover bug in the USB driver IC the next while discussing circuit design in between, why an elegant recursive solution causes a "drive full" error under certain conditions, why error handling in a certain protocol is pointless (already handled six layers down the network stack) - to name just a few real cases.

Knowing propagation delay in the gates can explain/reveal the limits of scheduling in the OS. Understanding drive rotation speeds provided the breakthrough of on the fly compression as an OS-level storage acceleration technique.

Take anything away? Just a sensible understanding of how everything works, and ability to drill into detail where and when needed. All learned in about 6 years, and even came out understanding why Aristophanes' plays survived for several millennia (to wit: dirty jokes endure).

What I do day to day (now)? Writing an iPad app for mobile enterprise data. Working under a genius crafting the many layers of abstraction making it fast & flexible, he can (has) describe a new way to represent very high level data, hand me a rough description of a virtual machine to process it efficiently, and I'll instantly see how it runs on server hardware. I can't imagine not having this view. As a part time teacher, I'm trying to get students from zero to binary to writing object oriented games in 12 weeks flat; to do less is to deprive them of the joy and rewards of knowing how things work - at every level.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love