Did we achieve the goals for this course? What did we learn?

COMP251: Computer ArchitectureJohn MacCormick

Did we achieve our goals?

• According to the syllabus, the goals were:– Gain an understanding of the aspects of computer

hardware that are most important for effective computer programming

– Gain an understanding of the aspects of computer hardware needed for studying computer networks and operating systems

– Achieve a high level of technical writing skills– Have fun writing computer programs and playing with

some cool simulation tools• Did we achieve them? You decide!

What did we learn?

• We learned a lot of technical stuff about computers, but here are some more high-level lessons that might help you be a better computer scientist:– Numerical computations have important limitations

• Integers are finite and can overflow• Floating point numbers are imprecise

– Multi-threaded software requires synchronization• And we need to understand instruction sets to see why this is necessary

– Efficient software must be aware of the memory hierarchy and storage hierarchy• Use sequential access when possible• Preserve locality when possible