Article

The postroom computer: teaching introductory undergraduate computer architecture

Author:

Hugh OsborneAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '02: Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 157 - 161

https://doi.org/10.1145/563340.563400

Published: 27 February 2002 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Undergraduate students often experience difficulty in understanding the basic principles of low level computer operations in introductory courses to computer architectures when these are taught using actual low level programming languages. This is not due to any inherent complexity of the concepts but rather a consequence of assembly language specific details and the need to introduce many concepts simultaneously, such as, for example, data representation, addressing modes and primitive I/O. This paper describes the Postroom Computer, a low level language simulator that not only provides a simple low level language, suitable as an introduction to assembly language programming, but also allows computer architecture concepts to be introduced in an incremental fashion.

References

[1]

Detmer, R. C. 80x86 Assembly Language and Computer Architecture. Jones and Bartlett, 2001.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Englander, I. The Architecture of Computer Hardware and Systems Software. John Wiley & Sons, 2000. Second edition.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Wolfe, G. S., Yurcik, W., Osborne, H., and Holliday, M. Teaching computer organization/architecture with limited resources using simulators. In Proceedings of SIGCSE 2002 (2002).

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Yurcik, W., and Osborne, H. A crowd of little man computers: Visual computer simulator teaching tools. In Proceedings of 2001 Winter Simulation Conference (2001).

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Lee JLee SYu HSuh T(2012)Pipelined CPU Design With FPGA in Teaching Computer ArchitectureIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2011.217522755:3(341-348)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TE.2011.2175227
Margush T(2006)Using an 8-BIT risc microcontroller in an assembly language programming courseJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/1181811.118181322:1(15-22)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1181811.1181813
Osborne HCrossley SMencák JYurcik WGehringer E(2002)PECTOPAHProceedings of the 2002 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/1275462.1275488(19-es)Online publication date: 26-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1275462.1275488
Show More Cited By

The postroom computer: teaching introductory undergraduate computer architecture
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs

Recommendations

The postroom computer: teaching introductory undergraduate computer architecture
Inroads: paving the way towards excellence in computing education

Undergraduate students often experience difficulty in understanding the basic principles of low level computer operations in introductory courses to computer architectures when these are taught using actual low level programming languages. This is not ...
The Postroom Computer

The Postroom Computer is a computer architecture simulator based on the Little Man Computer developed in 1965 by Stuart Madnick and John Donovan. It provides a family of architectures suitable for use in teaching introductory computer architectures. It ...
Attracting Secondary School Students to Computer Science through Training Teachers to Establish Computer Clubs: (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

The poster describes an innovative approach to help secondary school teachers enhance their computer science (CS) knowledge through the Google funded CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) program. Through a 4-day professional training workshop ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SIGCSE '02: Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

February 2002

471 pages

ISBN:1581134738

DOI:10.1145/563340

Conference Chairs:
Judith Gersting
University of Hawaii at Hilo
,
Henry M. Walker
Grinnell College
,
Program Chair:
Scott Grissom
Grand Valley State University

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 34, Issue 1
Inroads: paving the way towards excellence in computing education
March 2002
417 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/563517
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 February 2002

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

SIGCSE02

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE02: The 33rd Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 27 - March 3, 2002

Kentucky, Cincinnati

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '02 Paper Acceptance Rate 73 of 234 submissions, 31%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

Upcoming Conference

SIGCSE TS 2025

Sponsor:
sigcse

The 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 26 - March 1, 2025

Pittsburgh , PA , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

7
Total Citations
View Citations
493
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)3
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 30 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Lee JLee SYu HSuh T(2012)Pipelined CPU Design With FPGA in Teaching Computer ArchitectureIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2011.217522755:3(341-348)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TE.2011.2175227
Margush T(2006)Using an 8-BIT risc microcontroller in an assembly language programming courseJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/1181811.118181322:1(15-22)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1181811.1181813
Osborne HCrossley SMencák JYurcik WGehringer E(2002)PECTOPAHProceedings of the 2002 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/1275462.1275488(19-es)Online publication date: 26-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1275462.1275488
Osborne HMencák JGehringer E(2002)Update plansProceedings of the 2002 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/1275462.1275483(15-es)Online publication date: 26-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1275462.1275483
Crossley SOsborne HYurcik WGehringer E(2002)How computers really workProceedings of the 2002 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/1275462.1275482(14-es)Online publication date: 26-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1275462.1275482
Osborne HYurcik W(2002)The educational range of visual simulations of the Little Man Computer architecture paradigm32nd Annual Frontiers in Education10.1109/FIE.2002.1158742(S4G-19-S4G-24)Online publication date: 2002
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2002.1158742
Osborne HCrossley SMencák JYurcik WGehringer E(2002)PECTOPAHProceedings of the 2002 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/1275462.1275488(19-es)Online publication date: 26-May-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1275462.1275488

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Recommendations

The postroom computer: teaching introductory undergraduate computer architecture

The Postroom Computer

Attracting Secondary School Students to Computer Science through Training Teachers to Establish Computer Clubs: (Abstract Only)