Re: Target machine for compiler course

I just want to put the perspective of a student across in this discussion.


Here at DoC there are courses on architecture and compilers from years 1
through 4. The previous years did exercises on the PDP-11 architecture and
we've been introduced to the 68000 for our practical exercises, however
we've been given broad coverage of architectures from IBM370 up to SPARC
passing briefly through Intel 80x86 and Transputer and a few others
besides.


The main thing to remember is that some students are very interested in
low-level computing, compilers and OSs, while others are more interested
in AI and functional programming or formal methods. To get the best
reponse from people you've to engage their interest and not drown them in
irrelevance (read 'obsolescence' 8-)


My choice for teaching an architecture (being one who is learning them)
would be SPARC, or just possibly, POWER-RISC (PowerPC) because they're
RISC, and so more orthogonal than any 80x86, and very current. It's
stimulating to be learning the same thing that professionals are just
getting used to - and something genuinely useful too!


Advanced architecture features such as register windowing and
(super-)pipelining are also great fun to think about, even if for
practical work they are left well alone. One guy I know who is totally
hooked on AI and high-level comptuting became very enthusiastic when
confronted with the full pipelining and windowing of the SPARC.


What I hope I'm saying here is: don't underestimate students especially
when you push them and excite them - of course if you don't feel exciting
then by all means play safe. Choose an architecture that got updated in
the last year or so though or people won't take things seriously.
--
-Mark
--

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