DistExpertise-Architecture

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional units (A...

; Has a built in assembler and debugging facilites; A C compiler called dlxcc is available for the architecture.

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

This treatment includes topics such as linking and loading and the difference between RISC and CISC instruction set architectures.

A course on the programmer's view of computer architecture; this course covers machine level representation of data (AR2) and assembly level machine organization (AR3).

Specific architecture focus (80251)
Sivarama P. Dandamudi, Introduction to Assembly Language Programming: From 8086 to Pentium Processors, Springer Verlag, 1998 (ISBN: 0387985301).

John Impagliazzo
Department of Computer Science Hofstra University Hempstead, New York (USA) csejzi @Hofstra.edu

Deepak Kumar (Co-Chair)
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (USA) [email protected]

Undergraduate general focus
James R. Goodman and Karen Miller, Programmers View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from MIPS, RISC Architecture, HBJ College and School Division, 1993.

The topic of Digital Systems includes the following sub-areas: register transfer notation, finite state machines, tri-states and bus structures, iterations, decomposition and trade-offs, and block diagrams/timing diagrams.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

(Watch the project web page[6] for updates):
A cross listing of course links and author links with these textbooks is also under development.

The main topics listed are:
AR1. Digital logic and digital systems AR2. Machine level representation of data AR3. Assembly level machine organization AR4. Memory system organization AR5. I/O and communication AR6. CPU implementation
4.

This treatment includes topics such as linking and loading and the difference between RISC and CISC instruction set architectures.

The underlying assumption has been that there are people teaching in this subject area who are not entirely confident about the topic material they are teaching.

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional units (A...

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional units (A...

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

Deepak Kumar (Co-Chair)
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (USA) [email protected]

A self-contained simulator for running MIPS R2000/R3000 asl programs Contains peripherals: two serial ports, a timer, eight switches and a seven segment display
MIPSim
Unix
Web page: http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/Teaching/0657.20 l/Simulators.html

Windows version has a graphical user interface while the Unix version uses a textual interface
Web page: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/-larus/spim.html

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional u...

Topics covered in the required course or courses have been stable for a number of years.

Almost all respondents use a textbook in teaching the course.

The next section presents a comprehensive set of resources that are currently available through the World Wide Web.
5.

A more exhaustive list with live links will be made available through our project web site (http://christie.netlab.cse.villanova.edu-results/).

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

Assembler available.

IX.
Kenneth J. Ayala, The 80251 Microcontroller, Prentice Hall, 1999 (ISBN: 0139075518).

Windows version has a graphical user interface while the Unix version uses a textual interface
Web page: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/-larus/spim.html

A Low self-confidence ranking in a sub-area was assigned a value of 1, a Medium ranking was given a value of 2, and High rankings were assigned a value of 3.

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional units (A...

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

To gain
•
bus systems and control, DMA fault handling, reliability I/O control methods, interrupts
• • • interrupt acknowledgment • synchronization, open loop, handshaking
119
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
insight into the distribution of responses within a topic area, the individual index values were grouped to construct histograms.

The May/June 2000 issue of the IEEE Micro Magazine is a special issue dedicated to computer architecture education.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

See section 5.2 for a list of all the texts mentioned by survey responders.
t12
Textbook Author
Percentage Using Text
David A. Patterson and 35% John L. I-Iennessey
Andrew S. Tanenbaum 19% William Stallings 10%
M. Morris Mano 4% Greg W. Scragg 4% Carl Hamacher and 3%
Zvonko Vranesic All others 25%
The lab materials used vary widely from course to course.

IEEE Computer Society (www.computer.org)
5 http://www, sigmetrics.org/ 6 http://www, acm.org/sigmicro
116
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
capabilities and confidence in their ability to teach particular topics and sub-areas within those topics.
6.1

At this time there is no direct correlation of the resources to the specific needs of the survey responders.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Confidence level results and analysis
We now describe the results of the on-line survey for each of the major topics.

The topic of Digital Systems includes the following sub-areas: register transfer notation, finite state machines, tri-states and bus structures, iterations, decomposition and trade-offs, and block diagrams/timing diagrams.

Specific architecture focus (Intel)
Irv Englander, The Architecture of Computer Hardware and System Software: An Information Technology Approach, John Wiley & Sons, 2000 (ISBN: 0471362093).

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

; Has a built in assembler and debugging facilites; A C compiler called dlxcc is available for the architecture.

A representative sample of simulators used in teaching is summarized in Table 1.
5.10

The next section presents a comprehensive set of resources that are currently available through the World Wide Web.
5.

The ITiCSE attendees are not a random sample of faculty, of course, since they have enough interest in teaching to attend a conference on the topic.

This report presents preliminary results from our project on creating distributed expertise for teaching computer organization & architecture course(s) in the undergraduate computer science curriculum.

Examples include curricular recommendations, textbooks, conferences, and simulators.

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Computer Architecture (TCCA) publishes proceedings of some workshops in the TCCA Newsletters.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Specific architecture focus (SPARC)
114
•
•
• •
•
the AR1-AR6 categories in the Computing Curricula 2001 CS Body of Knowledge instruction set architectures (for example, MIPS- based versus Intel-based)
type of supporting software provided the degree of inclusion of digital logic, assembly language, and operating system content publication date
Top-Down Approach,
(ISBN:0070558434). focus
McGraw Hill, 1992 Undergraduate general
Future subcategorization of textbooks by the following cate...

Two-thirds of the courses represented in the survey are taught using either Patterson/Hennessey, Tanenbaum, or Stallings.

(Watch the project web page[6] for updates):
A cross listing of course links and author links with these textbooks is also under development.

Professional organizations
II. IEEE Computer Society Digital Library
(http://www.computer.org/publicationsldlibl).

Kevin Bolding
Department of Electrical Engineering Seattle Pacific University Seattle, Washington (USA) holding @spu.edu

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Instructions shown in assembly language format in the computers memory.

The more detailed sections of the survey
117
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Simulator
Easy CPU
LC2
Little Man
SPA SPIM
THR Siml 1
DLX Sim
Micro Archi- tecture
OS's Supported Windows
Unix
Web Based
Windows
Unix and Windows
Windows
Unix
Mac
Type
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Simple Instruction Level
Instruction Level Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Register Transfer Level
Register Transfer Level
Instruction Level
Features
RTLSim Unix
Suitable for teaching ...

ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Sponsored Conferences2:
links to many manufacturers can be found at: http:// www.cs .wisc.edu/~ arch/www/commercial.html.

A course on the programmer's view of computer architecture; this course covers machine level representation of data (AR2) and assembly level machine organization (AR3).

The goal of this subsection is to provide a representative list of currently used textbooks.

Specific architecture focus (SPARC)
114
•
•
• •
•
the AR1-AR6 categories in the Computing Curricula 2001 CS Body of Knowledge instruction set architectures (for example, MIPS- based versus Intel-based)
type of supporting software provided the degree of inclusion of digital logic, assembly language, and operating system content publication date
Top-Down Approach,
(ISBN:0070558434). focus
McGraw Hill, 1992 Undergraduate general
Future subcategorization of textbooks by the following cate...

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

Windows version has a graphical user interface while the Unix version uses a textual interface
Web page: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/-larus/spim.html

Undergraduate general focus
Vincent P. Heuring and Harry F. Jordan,
Computer Systems Design and Architecture,
Addison-Wesley, 1997 (ISBN: 080534330X).

To gain
•
bus systems and control, DMA fault handling, reliability I/O control methods, interrupts
• • • interrupt acknowledgment • synchronization, open loop, handshaking
119
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
insight into the distribution of responses within a topic area, the individual index values were grouped to construct histograms.

The survey was announced at SIGCSE2000 at the NSF Showcase and further
promoted through messages to the SIGCSE mailing list.

Gregory S. Wolffe
Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
Grand Valley State University Allendale, Michigan (USA) [email protected]

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional u...

It is ACM's primary forum for interchange of ideas about tomorrow's hardware and its interactions with compilers and operating systems.

A self-contained simulator for running MIPS R2000/R3000 assembly language programs.

A web page (maintained by University of Wisconsin Computer Architecture Group) that provides
2http://www.acm.org/sigcse/conference info.html 3 http://wwwassign.physics.ncsu.edu/compareh/ 4 http ://www.cs. wisc.edu/-arch/www/
I.
II.
HI.
IV.
Computer Science Education links (maintained by Renee McCauley).

Some examples follow:
I.
Workshop on Education (WCAE).

Specific architecture focus (Intel)
Irv Englander, The Architecture of Computer Hardware and System Software: An Information Technology Approach, John Wiley & Sons, 2000 (ISBN: 0471362093).

Of the respondents, 41% use only lectures for teaching, while 43% use lectures and labs together. 16% reported using only labs (open or closed) for teaching.

Following a discussion of the currently identified needs, we discuss ways to address them and conclude the report with a plan of action that will follow in the next phase of the project.
1.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

We here acknowledge the contribution of Edward Gehringer of North Carolina State University (USA) and Cecil Yehezkel of Weizmann Institute of Technology (Israel).

The survey was announced at SIGCSE2000 at the NSF Showcase and further
promoted through messages to the SIGCSE mailing list.

Specific architecture focus (MIPS)
Carl Hamacher and Zvonko Vranesic, Computer Organization 5thedition, McGraw Hill, 2000, (ISBN: 0071143092).

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

Suggestions of how to assess students' level of attainment, an account of how open-book examinations and take-home assignments contrast with the more formal in-class assignments and examinations.

• •
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education Conference on Innovations and Technology in
Computer Science Education (ITiCSE)
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/cs ed/iticse/ Compilation of Research Conferences
AnandTech (http://www.anandtech. corn/index, html)
http://www.cs.wise.edu/~arch/wwwleonferences.ht m (maintained by University of Wisconsin Computer Architecture Group)
(http://www.storagereview, corn/)
5.7

For example, the Computer Science Accreditation Commission (CSAC) of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) states in its Criteria for Accrediting Programs in Computer Science in the
United States, J1] adopted in January 2000, that "All students must take a broad-based core of fundamental computer science material ...

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

In general, projects make up the bulk of the remaining grade, with 69% of the classes determining between 25% and 50% of the grade based on projects.

The following are third party product review web sites that can also serve as a useful resource:
CPU Info Center (http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/)

Very simple single accumulator based architecture with a small number of instructions, Suitable for a first course in Computer Science.

The draft Computing Curricula 2001 report has been developed by the Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula of the IEEE Computer Society and of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Allows single stepping at the Instruction or Microinstruction level
Web site: http://www,ka~i,com/fab/msim.html

The main topics listed are:
AR1. Digital logic and digital systems AR2. Machine level representation of data AR3. Assembly level machine organization AR4. Memory system organization AR5. I/O and communication AR6. CPU implementation
4.

A self-contained simulator for running MIPS R2000/R3000 assembly language programs.

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

SIGMETRICS (ACM Special Interest Group for Computer/Communication System Performance).

Specific architecture focus (80251)
Sivarama P. Dandamudi, Introduction to Assembly Language Programming: From 8086 to Pentium Processors, Springer Verlag, 1998 (ISBN: 0387985301).

Viewing highlighted operations within a computer and in slow motion can be a powerful teaching tool.

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

Undergraduate general focus
Kip R. Irvine, Assembly Language for lntel- Based Computers 3raEdition, Prentice Hall, 1998 (ISBN:0136603904).

About the only generalizations that can be made are 1) most courses determine around one-half of the grade from exams, and around one- third from projects, and 2) most courses use one of the three most common textbooks, as shown in the table above.

We also present several resources that have been identified that are available for use by faculty teaching the course(s).

In general, projects make up the bulk of the remaining grade, with 69% of the classes determining between 25% and 50% of the grade based on projects.

(Watch the project web page[6] for updates):
A cross listing of course links and author links with these textbooks is also under development.

While much of this material is probably too advanced for an introductory computer organization course, it does provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art.
5.6

The topic of Digital Systems includes the following sub-areas: register transfer notation, finite state machines, tri-states and bus structures, iterations, decomposition and trade-offs, and block diagrams/timing diagrams.

Future work
will include matching resources to specific areas of faculty unease.

We present the details of an online survey designed to gather information from faculty on the current state of teaching this course.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Several people participated in the online discussions prior to convening the working group at ITiCSE 2000.

CSTC is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and by the ACM Education Board.

If an individual ranked their abilities in these sub-areas as Medium, Medium, Low, Not taught, Low, and Medium, respectively, their self-confidence index for the course topic of Digital Systems would be 1.6 ((2+2+1+1+2)/5).

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional u...

NSFCSCR has been established to provide a means to electronically disseminate the results of educational computer science programs and
framework for developing and visualization tools, computing
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
5.8
projects funded by NSF. This repository contains links to resources for computer science education that has been developed as part of a National Science Foundation grant.

Three bins were selected for each histogram, using the previously defined ranges as the cutoffs.

Specific architecture focus (80251)
Sivarama P. Dandamudi, Introduction to Assembly Language Programming: From 8086 to Pentium Processors, Springer Verlag, 1998 (ISBN: 0387985301).

Introduction
Basic principles about the organization and operation of a computer occupy a place in the core of most computing curricula.

Specific architecture focus (Intel)
Morris Mano, Computer System Architecture 3ra Edition, Prentice Hall, 1992 (ISBN: 0131755633) Undergraduate general focus
Karen Miller, An Assembly Language Introduction to Computer Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1999. http:
William Stallings, Computer Organization and Architecture: Design for Performance, 5th edition Prentice Hall, 2000 (ISBN: 0-13-081294- 3). h ttp://WilliamStallings.com/COA5e.html

Future work
will include matching resources to specific areas of faculty unease.

These kinds of observations, particularly if they could be generalized to the larger population of instructors, might direct areas in which resource development efforts would be most effective.
6.6

IX.
Kenneth J. Ayala, The 80251 Microcontroller, Prentice Hall, 1999 (ISBN: 0139075518).

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

A simulator for the Motorola 68HCllA8 micro controller.

Undergraduate general focus
James R. Goodman and Karen Miller, Programmers View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from MIPS, RISC Architecture, HBJ College and School Division, 1993.

Undergraduate general focus
James R. Goodman and Karen Miller, Programmers View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from MIPS, RISC Architecture, HBJ College and School Division, 1993.

As an example of this distinction, Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design, Second Edition[5] .is. widely used for a required first course in computer organization while Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Second Edition is usually used for a more advanced undergraduate elective or graduate course.The following list is derived from responses in our survey (in alphabetical order):
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.

Motivation
It is clear that a treatment of computer organization and architecture should be required in any curriculum for an undergraduate degree in computer science.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Carol Weiss and John Kelley of
Villanova University for assistance in designing the survey.

Even the most experienced and involved researcher in computing hardware may not be current or confident in some subtopics considered significant for introducing students to the subject.

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

Coding, Data Compression & Data Integrity is taught by the fewest instructors, and of those who teach it, the majority indicated a "low" self-confidence.
.-n
g
I,I.
3O
gm
10
Main Memory Organization and Cache Memory are taught by most instructors and are much better understood, but still stand out as areas where instructors could use additional resources.

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

The topic of Digital Systems includes the following sub-areas: register transfer notation, finite state machines, tri-states and bus structures, iterations, decomposition and trade-offs, and block diagrams/timing diagrams.

Because these topics must be taught in virtually all programs, there are wide variations in the expertise and interests of faculty assigned to teach them.

Also, the self-confidence indices were evenly distributed among the three rankings (Low, Medium, High), as opposed to being concentrated in the Medium range.
mDhN~ TaJ~it nHt-gh |NMedum BLbow
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
The topic in general is taught by relatively few instructors.

The database is only accessible by registered users who are usually instructors.

Following a discussion of the currently identified needs, we discuss ways to address them and conclude the report with a plan of action that will follow in the next phase of the project.
1.

The most thorough approach requires three courses which are typically the following:
113
I.
II.
III.
A digital logic course (the same course that electrical engineering and computer engineering students take), which covers digital logic and digital systems (AR1).

Of the respondents, 41% use only lectures for teaching, while 43% use lectures and labs together. 16% reported using only labs (open or closed) for teaching.

We would like to thank the organizers of ITiCSE2000 for providing access to all of the resources (computers, internet access, meeting room, copying facilities, etc.) at the University of Helsinki.

We decided to categorize resources by source type.

This report presents a comprehensive list of existing resources that faculty can use now.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

Two-thirds of the courses represented in the survey are taught using either Patterson/Hennessey, Tanenbaum, or Stallings.

For example, the Computer Science Accreditation Commission (CSAC) of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) states in its Criteria for Accrediting Programs in Computer Science in the
United States, J1] adopted in January 2000, that "All students must take a broad-based core of fundamental computer science material ...

Beyond the required course(s), there are elective courses that typically do a more detailed treatment of uniprocessor memory and processor design, address parallel architectures, or
focus on microcomputer interfacing.

This report identifies what should be in the required core material on computer organization and architecture within its CS Body of
Knowledge appendix.

• •
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education Conference on Innovations and Technology in
Computer Science Education (ITiCSE)
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/cs ed/iticse/ Compilation of Research Conferences
AnandTech (http://www.anandtech. corn/index, html)
http://www.cs.wise.edu/~arch/wwwleonferences.ht m (maintained by University of Wisconsin Computer Architecture Group)
(http://www.storagereview, corn/)
5.7

Mark Holliday
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Western Carolina University Cullowhee, North Carolina (USA) [email protected]

A high-level list of topics and categories that reflect possible goals of the course.

Im, DNc~Tau~W DHQh iMBcIum
Low
.

Students can learn the fundamentals of computer organization/architecture by visually observing and interacting with animated data flow within a particular hypothetical or real machine.

Following a discussion of the currently identified needs, we discuss ways to address them and conclude the report with a plan of action that will follow in the next phase of the project.
1.

The main topics listed are:
AR1. Digital logic and digital systems AR2. Machine level representation of data AR3. Assembly level machine organization AR4. Memory system organization AR5. I/O and communication AR6. CPU implementation
4.

A wide variety of texts are in use, but only a few seem to be widely used.

The percentage of respondents with a Low self- confidence index was 19%, and most individuals' index fell in the range we categorize as Medium.

A self-contained simulator for running MIPS R2000/R3000 asl programs Contains peripherals: two serial ports, a timer, eight switches and a seven segment display
MIPSim
Unix
Web page: http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/Teaching/0657.20 l/Simulators.html

For example, it is notable that most instructors who teach Decomposition and Trade-offs consider themselves to be poorly qualified in that sub-area, but this material is often taught in a separate digital logic design class.

A number of people sent messages saying they had heard about the survey from a colleague who saw the notice on the SIGCSE list and had a question or a comment.

The survey was designed to be easy to use, with the intention that its length would not be overly burdensome.

Mark Holliday
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Western Carolina University Cullowhee, North Carolina (USA) [email protected]

The survey aims to identify which topic areas are commonly taught in courses in computer organization/architecture and where faculty, teaching those courses, have low confidence levels about their command of the topics.

It also provides a list of books, periodicals, videos web sites, courses and other information of interest that may be useful to teachers and students.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Specific architecture focus (SPARC)
114
•
•
• •
•
the AR1-AR6 categories in the Computing Curricula 2001 CS Body of Knowledge instruction set architectures (for example, MIPS- based versus Intel-based)
type of supporting software provided the degree of inclusion of digital logic, assembly language, and operating system content publication date
Top-Down Approach,
(ISBN:0070558434). focus
McGraw Hill, 1992 Undergraduate general
Future subcategorization of textbooks by the following cate...

The survey also tries to identify specific areas of need for creating distributed expertise as reported by various faculty.

Kevin Bolding
Department of Electrical Engineering Seattle Pacific University Seattle, Washington (USA) holding @spu.edu

Developed to support the teaching of EECS 100 at the University of Michigan.

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

In all cases, the faculty are challenged to remain current in the topic and to address both the fundamental principles and
ramifications of recent developments.

The survey was announced at SIGCSE2000 at the NSF Showcase and further
promoted through messages to the SIGCSE mailing list.

Registered users are able to search the database and download problems without charge.

(ISBN# 019-512-376X)
David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy,
Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface, Second Edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997 (ISBN: 1558604286). http ://www.mkp.com/ books_catalog/catalog.asp?ISBN=1-55860-428-6 Undergraduate focus, often considered advanced
G-~eg W. Scragg, Computer Organization: A
I. II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

The survey also tries to identify specific areas of need for creating distributed expertise as reported by various faculty.

Following a discussion of the currently identified needs, we discuss ways to address them and conclude the report with a plan of action that will follow in the next phase of the project.
1.

A variety of grading mechanisms are used.

Introduction
Basic principles about the organization and operation of a computer occupy a place in the core of most computing curricula.

Thus, this is not a curriculum recommendation and no suggested syllabus is included.

Kevin Bolding
Department of Electrical Engineering Seattle Pacific University Seattle, Washington (USA) holding @spu.edu

These workshops are held in
Computer
Architecture
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
II.
III.
conjunction with the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) and/or International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA): the first one was held in 1994.

The more detailed sections of the survey
117
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Simulator
Easy CPU
LC2
Little Man
SPA SPIM
THR Siml 1
DLX Sim
Micro Archi- tecture
OS's Supported Windows
Unix
Web Based
Windows
Unix and Windows
Windows
Unix
Mac
Type
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Simple Instruction Level
Instruction Level Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Register Transfer Level
Register Transfer Level
Instruction Level
Features
RTLSim Unix
Suitable for teaching ...

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

A majority of respondents use locally developed materials.

A web page for the TCCA can be found at http:l/www.computer.org/tab/ tcca/index.htm
5.9

The TCCA annually sponsors the International Symposium on Computer Architecture and publishes a newsletter periodically containing meeting reports, abstracts of technical reports, call-for- papers, and other announcements.

• •
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education Conference on Innovations and Technology in
Computer Science Education (ITiCSE)
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/cs ed/iticse/ Compilation of Research Conferences
AnandTech (http://www.anandtech. corn/index, html)
http://www.cs.wise.edu/~arch/wwwleonferences.ht m (maintained by University of Wisconsin Computer Architecture Group)
(http://www.storagereview, corn/)
5.7

Pointers to student-oriented material: selected exercises and projects for students, sample examination questions, and suggested short essay assignments.

This treatment includes topics such as linking and loading and the difference between RISC and CISC instruction set architectures.

These are described in the remainder of this section.
5.1

Some faculty who teach these subjects are deeply involved in the topic areas, others
Jim Davies
Computing Laboratory University of Oxford Oxford, England (UK) Jim.davies @comlab.ox.ac.uk

These workshops are held in
Computer
Architecture
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
II.
III.
conjunction with the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) and/or International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA): the first one was held in 1994.

We have no way of tracking how many people heard about the survey from those we contacted.

Computer Science Education Resources (maintained by Lewis Barnett).

Suitable for a course on micro controllers where the emphasis is on interfacing to other devices
Web page: http://www.hcl i .demon.n]/thrsiml l/thrsim 11.htm

It is ACM's primary forum for interchange of ideas about tomorrow's hardware and its interactions with compilers and operating systems.

Two areas of need stand out: Propagation Delays/Hazards and Synchronous/Asynchronous circuits.

For part (c), responses included looking for online educational
[] NotTaughI ]
[]Hish
• Medium [] Low
I
124
ITiCSE 2000 WorkingGroup Reports
computer organization course involves a myriad of tactics for finding resources and blending them into an appropriate course.

This situation can arise for any of the categories mentioned above.

Each of the major topics is broken down into several subareas.

The following are third party product review web sites that can also serve as a useful resource:
CPU Info Center (http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/)

If a respondent selected "Not taught" or "Would teach if' for a particular sub-area, it was not included in the index.

See section 5.2 for a list of all the texts mentioned by survey responders.
t12
Textbook Author
Percentage Using Text
David A. Patterson and 35% John L. I-Iennessey
Andrew S. Tanenbaum 19% William Stallings 10%
M. Morris Mano 4% Greg W. Scragg 4% Carl Hamacher and 3%
Zvonko Vranesic All others 25%
The lab materials used vary widely from course to course.

To gain
•
bus systems and control, DMA fault handling, reliability I/O control methods, interrupts
• • • interrupt acknowledgment • synchronization, open loop, handshaking
119
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
insight into the distribution of responses within a topic area, the individual index values were grouped to construct histograms.

Product review sites compare and contrast different vendor products in illuminating ways.

Topics covered in the required course or courses have been stable for a number of years.

Still another future activity is a careful analysis of the effectiveness of the survey instrument in meeting the goals of this project.

RTL level simulator for a simple non-pipelined MIPs CPU where the user acts as
the control unit setting control signals to get the data-path to perform required operations, Contains a visual representation of the data-path Web site: http://www.cs.waikato:ac.nzlcs/Teaching/O657.201/Simulators

We would like to thank the organizers of ITiCSE2000 for providing access to all of the resources (computers, internet access, meeting room, copying facilities, etc.) at the University of Helsinki.

The survey allowed a choice of faculty or text as the limiting factor.

Has built in assembler Web page: http://138.87.169.30/lmc/defau]t.htm

NSFCSCR has been established to provide a means to electronically disseminate the results of educational computer science programs and
framework for developing and visualization tools, computing
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
5.8
projects funded by NSF. This repository contains links to resources for computer science education that has been developed as part of a National Science Foundation grant.

Variations in course design
There are several approaches to assembling the core material on computer organization and architecture into one or more courses.

William Yurcik
Department of Applied Computer Science Illinois State University Normal, Illinois (USA) wjyurci @ilstu.edu
represents a mid-point of an ongoing two-year study.

As an example of this distinction, Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design, Second Edition[5] .is. widely used for a required first course in computer organization while Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Second Edition is usually used for a more advanced undergraduate elective or graduate course.The following list is derived from responses in our survey (in alphabetical order):
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.

Specific architecture focus (SPARC)
114
•
•
• •
•
the AR1-AR6 categories in the Computing Curricula 2001 CS Body of Knowledge instruction set architectures (for example, MIPS- based versus Intel-based)
type of supporting software provided the degree of inclusion of digital logic, assembly language, and operating system content publication date
Top-Down Approach,
(ISBN:0070558434). focus
McGraw Hill, 1992 Undergraduate general
Future subcategorization of textbooks by the following cate...

Each of the major topics is broken down into several subareas.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

With the exception of Register Transfer Notation, all sub-areas were mentioned by fewer than one-third of those surveyed.

Gregory S. Wolffe
Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
Grand Valley State University Allendale, Michigan (USA) [email protected]

Viewing highlighted operations within a computer and in slow motion can be a powerful teaching tool.

Because these topics must be taught in virtually all programs, there are wide variations in the expertise and interests of faculty assigned to teach them.

We would like to thank the organizers of ITiCSE2000 for providing access to all of the resources (computers, internet access, meeting room, copying facilities, etc.) at the University of Helsinki.

Undergraduate general focus
James R. Goodman and Karen Miller, Programmers View of Computer Architecture: With Assembly Language Examples from MIPS, RISC Architecture, HBJ College and School Division, 1993.

To gain
•
bus systems and control, DMA fault handling, reliability I/O control methods, interrupts
• • • interrupt acknowledgment • synchronization, open loop, handshaking
119
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
insight into the distribution of responses within a topic area, the individual index values were grouped to construct histograms.

See section 5.2 for a list of all the texts mentioned by survey responders.
t12
Textbook Author
Percentage Using Text
David A. Patterson and 35% John L. I-Iennessey
Andrew S. Tanenbaum 19% William Stallings 10%
M. Morris Mano 4% Greg W. Scragg 4% Carl Hamacher and 3%
Zvonko Vranesic All others 25%
The lab materials used vary widely from course to course.

Undergraduate general focus
Vincent P. Heuring and Harry F. Jordan,
Computer Systems Design and Architecture,
Addison-Wesley, 1997 (ISBN: 080534330X).

Viewing highlighted operations within a computer and in slow motion can be a powerful teaching tool.

CSTC is
115
L II. Storage Review
Tom's Hardware Page (http://www. tomshardware, com/)
currently a distributing laboratories, and multimedia resources but will be expanded to include a variety of other resources such as curriculum development, test banks, lecture notes, and syllabi.

Two-thirds of the courses represented in the survey are taught using either Patterson/Hennessey, Tanenbaum, or Stallings.

SIGCSE provides a forum for problems common among educators working to develop, implement, and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy.

Certainly people teaching outside their interest area are likely to be more in need of support than others, but the need is widespread.

William Yurcik
Department of Applied Computer Science Illinois State University Normal, Illinois (USA) wjyurci @ilstu.edu
represents a mid-point of an ongoing two-year study.

RTL level simulator for a simple non-pipelined MIPs CPU where the user acts as
the control unit setting control signals to get the data-path to perform required operations, Contains a visual representation of the data-path Web site: http://www.cs.waikato:ac.nzlcs/Teaching/O657.201/Simulators

This treatment includes topics such as linking and loading and the difference between RISC and CISC instruction set architectures.

The majority (65%) determine between 50% and 75% of the grade from exams. 21% of the courses rely on exams for less than half of the grade, and 13% use exams for more than three-quarters of the grade.

Models a microprogrammed architecture similar to the one described in the book Structured Computer Organisation by Andrew Tanenbaum (Prentice Hall).

There are many reasons for choosing one approach or another and for selecting the topics for a particular course.

Survey respondents as a whole either felt extremely confident of their ability to teach a topic, felt adequately prepared to teach it, or clearly indicated a need for assistance.
6.3

The most common method - borrowing a syllabus from an existing course - fails to bring to light the decisions made in designing the course.

This situation can arise for any of the categories mentioned above.

The underlying assumption has been that there are people teaching in this subject area who are not entirely confident about the topic material they are teaching.

The majority (65%) determine between 50% and 75% of the grade from exams. 21% of the courses rely on exams for less than half of the grade, and 13% use exams for more than three-quarters of the grade.

To date, 82 individuals have completed the survey.

ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Abstract
Distributed Expertise for Teaching Computer Organization & Architecture
Lillian (Boots) Cassel (Co-Chair)
Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania (USA) cassel @acm.org

Introduction
Basic principles about the organization and operation of a computer occupy a place in the core of most computing curricula.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used...

In general, projects make up the bulk of the remaining grade, with 69% of the classes determining between 25% and 50% of the grade based on projects.

Further, the number of respondents was too small to permit generalizations; some interesting observations can be made by comparing survey answers.

Overview of survey results
The survey has two distinct parts, general information in the first part and specific confidence levels in the second part.

A course on the programmer's view of computer architecture; this course covers machine level representation of data (AR2) and assembly level machine organization (AR3).

Digital logic
• external storage, physical organization and drives
Alternative architectures
• • • • • • •
basic logic elements and switching theory minimization and implementation of functions propagation delays and hazards technologies; flip-flops
devices (demultiplexers, decoders, comparators) memories (ROM, PROM, RAM) analysis/synthesis of synchronous circuits; asynchronous circuits
• • •
CISC, RISC parallel architectures (VLIW, SIMD, MIMD) tight coupling
Digital systems
6.2

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

CSTC is
115
L II. Storage Review
Tom's Hardware Page (http://www. tomshardware, com/)
currently a distributing laboratories, and multimedia resources but will be expanded to include a variety of other resources such as curriculum development, test banks, lecture notes, and syllabi.

Resources tied to one of these texts are likely to be well received, while those dependent on other texts will find smaller audiences.

Resources tied to one of these texts are likely to be well received, while those dependent on other texts will find smaller audiences.

Eight out of 25 instructors who propagation delays and hazards indicated a low level of self-confidence.

The more detailed sections of the survey
117
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Simulator
Easy CPU
LC2
Little Man
SPA SPIM
THR Siml 1
DLX Sim
Micro Archi- tecture
OS's Supported Windows
Unix
Web Based
Windows
Unix and Windows
Windows
Unix
Mac
Type
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Simple Instruction Level
Instruction Level Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Register Transfer Level
Register Transfer Level
Instruction Level
Features
RTLSim Unix
Suitable for teaching ...

Preliminary needs analysis - survey results
The first step in providing distributed expertise in any subject area is to determine where such assistance might be desired.

An overall confidence ranking of an individual was then assigned based upon the following ranges:
•
• • • • •
register transfer notation finite state machines tri-states and bus structures iterations
decomposition, trade-offs, economics block diagrams, timing diagrams, transfer language
Machine level representation of data
• • •
•
numeric data representation (binary, hexadecimal) non-numeric data (ASCII, Unicode) basic organization (yon Neumann, data paths, control paths)
functional u...

These workshops are held in
Computer
Architecture
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
II.
III.
conjunction with the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) and/or International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA): the first one was held in 1994.

A wide variety of texts are in use, but only a few seem to be widely used.

The underlying assumption has been that there are people teaching in this subject area who are not entirely confident about the topic material they are teaching.

The percentage of respondents with a Low self- confidence index was 19%, and most individuals' index fell in the range we categorize as Medium.

A web site is currently under development to provide a front door to Web based resources in the areas of computer organization
and architecture.

See section 5.2 for a list of all the texts mentioned by survey responders.
t12
Textbook Author
Percentage Using Text
David A. Patterson and 35% John L. I-Iennessey
Andrew S. Tanenbaum 19% William Stallings 10%
M. Morris Mano 4% Greg W. Scragg 4% Carl Hamacher and 3%
Zvonko Vranesic All others 25%
The lab materials used vary widely from course to course.

Tight Coupling is skipped by most instructors.

Resources tied to one of these texts are likely to be well received, while those dependent on other texts will find smaller audiences.

The majority (65%) determine between 50% and 75% of the grade from exams. 21% of the courses rely on exams for less than half of the grade, and 13% use exams for more than three-quarters of the grade.

About the only generalizations that can be made are 1) most courses determine around one-half of the grade from exams, and around one- third from projects, and 2) most courses use one of the three most common textbooks, as shown in the table above.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Carol Weiss and John Kelley of
Villanova University for assistance in designing the survey.

In this section, we attempt to identify the areas within computer organization/architecture where survey respondents feel they are most in need of assistance.

Murray Pearson
Department of Computer Science The University of Waikato Hamilton (New Zealand) mpearson @cs.waikato.ac.nz

With the exception of Register Transfer Notation, all sub-areas were mentioned by fewer than one-third of those surveyed.

We present the details of an online survey designed to gather information from faculty on the current state of teaching this course.

We have no way of tracking how many people heard about the survey from those we contacted.

However, several did mention using the SPIM simulator (see section 5.8 on Simulators below) in their labs as well.

The majority (65%) determine between 50% and 75% of the grade from exams. 21% of the courses rely on exams for less than half of the grade, and 13% use exams for more than three-quarters of the grade.

The survey distinguishes between those who do not teach the topic because they do not have any interest in including that topic in their course and those who would like to include a specific topic but do not for one reason or another.

The more detailed sections of the survey
117
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
Simulator
Easy CPU
LC2
Little Man
SPA SPIM
THR Siml 1
DLX Sim
Micro Archi- tecture
OS's Supported Windows
Unix
Web Based
Windows
Unix and Windows
Windows
Unix
Mac
Type
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Simple Instruction Level
Instruction Level Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Instruction Level
Register Transfer Level
Register Transfer Level
Instruction Level
Features
RTLSim Unix
Suitable for teaching ...

Textbooks
Many books could and have served a~s textbooks for computer organization courses (too many to list here).

Three bins were selected for each histogram, using the previously defined ranges as the cutoffs.

To date, 82 individuals have completed the survey.

Following a discussion of the currently identified needs, we discuss ways to address them and conclude the report with a plan of action that will follow in the next phase of the project.
1.

Has simple scripting language to facilitate in the testing and grading of programs Web page: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/-postiffm/lc2/lc2.html

Some faculty who teach these subjects are deeply involved in the topic areas, others
Jim Davies
Computing Laboratory University of Oxford Oxford, England (UK) Jim.davies @comlab.ox.ac.uk

Murray Pearson
Department of Computer Science The University of Waikato Hamilton (New Zealand) mpearson @cs.waikato.ac.nz

To gain
•
bus systems and control, DMA fault handling, reliability I/O control methods, interrupts
• • • interrupt acknowledgment • synchronization, open loop, handshaking
119
ITiCSE 2000 Working Group Reports
insight into the distribution of responses within a topic area, the individual index values were grouped to construct histograms.

Overview of survey results
The survey has two distinct parts, general information in the first part and specific confidence levels in the second part.

A self-contained simulator for running MIPS R2000/R3000 assembly language programs.

The basic assumptions were investigated through a survey developed and administered under a grant from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF EHR/DUE 9951352).

Because these topics must be taught in virtually all programs, there are wide variations in the expertise and interests of faculty assigned to teach them.

This presented a list of teaching resources:
Re$o~rc~
Textbook resources (Author's support pages)
Others' lecture notes Others' programming assignments Others' laboratory assignments Problem/Solution sets "White papers" Posters/diagrams Commercial Web sites Simulators Animations Videos/movies On-line FAQ Discussion group / Chat room Email colleagues/experts Guest lecturers
Attendees were asked: if/when they had to teach a new course, which of the above types of resources had they used in the...

Two-thirds of the courses represented in the survey are taught using either Patterson/Hennessey, Tanenbaum, or Stallings.

Summary and plan of action
The work reported here provides a first view of the survey conducted on what topics related to computer organization/architecture people teach, where there are challenges in teaching those topics well, and what kinds of support would appear to be most useful to faculty teaching these topics.

John Impagliazzo
Department of Computer Science Hofstra University Hempstead, New York (USA) csejzi @Hofstra.edu

Overview of survey results
The survey has two distinct parts, general information in the first part and specific confidence levels in the second part.

• •
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education Conference on Innovations and Technology in
Computer Science Education (ITiCSE)
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/cs ed/iticse/ Compilation of Research Conferences
AnandTech (http://www.anandtech. corn/index, html)
http://www.cs.wise.edu/~arch/wwwleonferences.ht m (maintained by University of Wisconsin Computer Architecture Group)
(http://www.storagereview, corn/)
5.7

Mark Holliday
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Western Carolina University Cullowhee, North Carolina (USA) [email protected]

Gregory S. Wolffe
Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
Grand Valley State University Allendale, Michigan (USA) [email protected]

Specific architecture focus (MIPS)
Carl Hamacher and Zvonko Vranesic, Computer Organization 5thedition, McGraw Hill, 2000, (ISBN: 0071143092).

CSTC is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and by the ACM Education Board.

Specific architecture focus (Intel)
Morris Mano, Computer System Architecture 3ra Edition, Prentice Hall, 1992 (ISBN: 0131755633) Undergraduate general focus
Karen Miller, An Assembly Language Introduction to Computer Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1999. http:
William Stallings, Computer Organization and Architecture: Design for Performance, 5th edition Prentice Hall, 2000 (ISBN: 0-13-081294- 3). h ttp://WilliamStallings.com/COA5e.html

The topic of Digital Systems includes the following sub-areas: register transfer notation, finite state machines, tri-states and bus structures, iterations, decomposition and trade-offs, and block diagrams/timing diagrams.

Simulators
Current software technology enables rich learning environments for visualization and active learning of computer organization using animated simulators.

From these results, it is clear that resources that help design exams and projects would also be very well received.

Popular responses to part (b) were to check materials from sponsoring organizations such as ACM or IEEE/CS, to become familiar with the recommendations of colleagues and publishers, to make decisions based on preference and philosophy of the instructor, and to establish a correspondence between course syllabus and the chosen textbook.

Even the most experienced and involved researcher in computing hardware may not be current or confident in some subtopics considered significant for introducing students to the subject.

A monthly newsletter keeps subscribers informed about the latest additions to the library.

Some faculty who teach these subjects are deeply involved in the topic areas, others
Jim Davies
Computing Laboratory University of Oxford Oxford, England (UK) Jim.davies @comlab.ox.ac.uk

As an example of this distinction, Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design, Second Edition[5] .is. widely used for a required first course in computer organization while Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Second Edition is usually used for a more advanced undergraduate elective or graduate course.The following list is derived from responses in our survey (in alphabetical order):
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.

For example, the Computer Science Accreditation Commission (CSAC) of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) states in its Criteria for Accrediting Programs in Computer Science in the
United States, J1] adopted in January 2000, that "All students must take a broad-based core of fundamental computer science material ...

The most common method - borrowing a syllabus from an existing course - fails to bring to light the decisions made in designing the course.

The TCCA annually sponsors the International Symposium on Computer Architecture and publishes a newsletter periodically containing meeting reports, abstracts of technical reports, call-for- papers, and other announcements.

Preliminary needs analysis - survey results
The first step in providing distributed expertise in any subject area is to determine where such assistance might be desired.

The table below lists the percentages of respondents using particular texts for all texts that were mentioned more than once.

For example, the list of topics in Computing Curricula 199112] and the draft Computing Curricula 200113] (current draft is dated March 6, 2000) closely overlap.

It is also notable that very few instructors rated themselves with "high" confidence in those two areas.
3O
25
5
0
120
6.4.2

As an example of this distinction, Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design, Second Edition[5] .is. widely used for a required first course in computer organization while Hennessy and Patterson's Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, Second Edition is usually used for a more advanced undergraduate elective or graduate course.The following list is derived from responses in our survey (in alphabetical order):
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.

Due to the large volume and diversity of materials, a key issue is how to categorize potential resources for these topics.

We conclude that even
though the topic in general received a Medium ranking, because of the large numbers of instructors teaching and indicating difficulties with the sub-areas of I/O & Interrupts and Hardware Realization, it would be useful to provide access to resources directed at those topics.
6.4.5

From these results, it is clear that resources that help design exams and projects would also be very well received.

These kinds of observations, particularly if they could be generalized to the larger population of instructors, might direct areas in which resource development efforts would be most effective.
6.6