On the structure of a multipurpose introductory course in computer architecture at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute

In this paper, the authors describe the structure and contents of an introductory course in computer architecture that is designed to meet multiple objectives and offered to the first year graduate students and senior undergraduate students at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA. The objectives include providing a solid background in computer architecture to senior undergraduate students, providing prerequisite preparation for advanced computer engineering courses to the graduate students, and offering a self sufficient study of the computer architecture field to those students who do not pursue further courses in the field. Appropriate projects integrated into the course and public domain tools that were used to facilitate the project assignments are described. The paper describes important issues that were addressed in designing the course structure and its contents. The effectiveness of the approach presented in this paper is supported from experience that has resulted after multiple offerings of the course over a period of three years