Abstract

Computer architecture is an essential topic in undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curricula. Teaching computer architecture courses to CS students can be challenging, as the concepts are on a high abstraction level and not easy to grasp for students. Learning of computer architecture abstracts is strongly reinforced by hands-on assignment experience. This paper presents results from a survey of assignments from 40 undergraduate computer architecture courses, which are offered in 40 CS departments. These surveyed courses are selected from universities listed among the 120 top North America universities by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2015. The information used for this survey is based solely on material publicly accessible on the websites of courses.

Highlights

  • Understanding the interaction of hardware with software should be considered a minimum in knowledge for any Computer Science (CS) graduate

  • We present an overall and up-to date picture of various types of assignments in undergraduate computer architecture courses, their categorization, as well as programming languages, tools and platforms used in these assignments

  • These surveyed courses are selected from 40 CS departments of universities listed among the 120 top North America universities by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2015 [9]

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Summary

A SURVEY OF ASSIGNMENTS IN UNDERGRADUATE COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE COURSES

Abstract—Computer architecture is an essential topic in undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curricula. Teaching computer architecture courses to CS students can be challenging, as the concepts are on a high abstraction level and not easy to grasp for students. Learning of computer architecture abstracts is strongly reinforced by hands-on assignment experience. This paper presents results from a survey of assignments from 40 undergraduate computer architecture courses, which are offered in 40 CS departments. These surveyed courses are selected from universities listed among the 120 top North America universities by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2015.

INTRODUCTION
ASSIGNMENT CATEGORIZATION
Problem sets
Assembly language programming
SURVEY RESULTS
Assignment distribution
CONCLUSIONS
Full Text
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