A Visual Instruction Set Architecture and Simulation Tool for Computer Engineering Education

This paper presents a holistic approach to develop a visual simulation system for computer engineering education. This approach starts out with a visual instruction set architecture, and plans to build the other layers of computers by moving up and down from such an instruction set architecture specification in a simulation environment. As a step in this direction, an instruction set architecture, called CodeMill, has been developed and used successfully in teaching computer organization courses at the University of Maryland as well as computer science classes in a number of secondary school programs, and is being extended to include compiler and operating systems layers into its simulation environment. The paper describes the CodeMill and its simulation environment, and presents a road map for expanding it into a comprehensive system for learning core computer engineering concepts with hands-on tools.