SDC 306 - Computer Architecture

[Ideas]

Around 12 hours on the assignment, a lot of that is just scraping the web on all the resources available for building 4bit and 8bit cpu's. I had to wrap up the course but one thing not clear in the assignment is how far you should take that CPU design so I basically did 90% of the assignment and ended up having a passing grade.

Congrats on getting it done in a reasonable time. I consider that very reasonable.

I had a bad dream about the assignment. It was really, really long in the dream.

I feel better since you managed in about 12 hours, so thank you for updating. However, I may not try to finish before my current Study.com membership ends. Too much other stuff came up.

[posabsolute]

Final grade was 80.

I used 2 Operands

I did this style of assembly:
ADD A, B

The assembly part was actually not that hard for me.


@Ideas, depending on your grade on the exam and how far you want to take this, you can reasonably expect to pass without putting too much time on implementing the CPU itself. Do Phase 1 and 2 (mostly the ALU, there are a lot of tutorials on ALU design on youtube), do the state diagrams, do the assembly code. This should be enough to pass the course.

I went further than that, it deepened my understanding, but I'm still not at the point where I can implement the full 8bit CPU.

[armstrongsubero]

@posabsolute I used the same! Was just curious...

@ideas and others wanting to do the course, there is a great resource on youtube, that eill help everything maybe its just cause I like electronics, but I found this a few years sgo and was trying so hard to find it to mention here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...5dvjafglHU

The guy builds a CPU from logic chips and a 555. Its ingenious. I ordered the chips I was missing from Aliexpress and followed with him a few years ago! It cemented stuff in me that I wont ever unlearn and deepened my understanding so much.

You dont have to buy the chips and follow but the explanation and visualizations of CPU internals is unmatched.

Hope this helps someone somewhere! No only if I could remember what I did with my project....

[bjcheung77]

Armstrong/Posabsolute, thanks for the info. I am working on these as we speak... I just started and was switching back and forth between three course assignments thinking which one would be best to work on. I'll keep these in mind, thank you again for the feedback and info here.

[udi]

I just got to the assignment and I'm thinking ... this is terrible. I already know how to code in 6502 assembly, but I knew that I would hit a roadblock when it came to designing the circuits. I have no idea how complicated the ALU should be and most tutorials start with a few bits instead of 8. I didn't find a diagram anywhere at Study.com, but there is a lesson on ALU inputs. I e-mailed the content team because I don't think it makes sense to prompt the student for something that hasn't been taught. Though, I did the lessons out of order, so I wonder if I forgot a lesson somewhere.

[Ideas]

I just got to the assignment and I'm thinking ... this is terrible. I already know how to code in 6502 assembly, but I knew that I would hit a roadblock when it came to designing the circuits. I have no idea how complicated the ALU should be and most tutorials start with a few bits instead of 8. I didn't find a diagram anywhere at Study.com, but there is a lesson on ALU inputs. I e-mailed the content team because I don't think it makes sense to prompt the student for something that hasn't been taught. Though, I did the lessons out of order, so I wonder if I forgot a lesson somewhere.

It's not because you missed a lesson. I have the same issue.

I think that Study.com didn't want to miss out on getting it approved, so they erred on the side of making it harder. 

Others on this forum have pointed out that it's more like a test-out course where you have to learn that portion on your own. I think they should at least recommend a couple textbooks.

[posabsolute]

Definitively the hardest thing I did on study.com


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[saraholson]

yeah... i have to take their C programming course. Not looking forward to that, as i do not know the language already. i am guessing i will be spending a lot of time on stack overflow.

[Ideas]

yeah... i have to take their C programming course. Not looking forward to that, as i do not know the language already. i am guessing i will be spending a lot of time on stack overflow.

Most of their courses are good without previous knowledge. Their Computer Architecture course is pretty different.

But maybe you could take Straighterline C++.

[Salamander]

I've done quite a bit a java programming, but never anything in assembly language. Does the SDC course go over the language at all?