CS 7491

The Great Instruction Set Architectures

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2019-2020.

From the ENIAC to the latest Xeon, the overwhelming majority of computer systems in history have embodied a single programming paradigm: the von Neumann architecture. Machines appear to process streams of instructions one at a time, modifying the state of memory and registers at each step. But far more exotic ISAs are possible. This course is a survey of the breadth of strange and unfamiliar ISA paradigms that have appeared and disappeared over 75 years of computing. This is a reading and discussion seminar that will cover one paper per week.

When Offered Spring.

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