An educational environment for teaching a course in computer architecture and organization

Abstract

The paper presents an educational environment for teaching a course in Computer architecture and organization. It is made up of an educational computer system, a reference manual, a software package and a set of laboratory experiments. The educational computer system is devised in such a way that it covers the basic structure of a computer system: processor, memory, input/output subsystem and bus. The reference manual provides all implementation details with the appropriate circuits drawings and detailed descriptions. For the devised educational computer system a software package is developed which includes the program development tools and the graphic simulator. They make it possible to develop programs for it and execute them under the graphic simulator. The simulator allows to execute programs at the clock, instruction and program levels and to examine, at any time, the values of all signals of the educational computer system down to the register transfer level. In the paper is also given a set of laboratory experiments that the students must carry out successfully using the reference manual and the software package as a prerequisite for taking an exam in Computer architecture and organization.