C952 Computer Architecture#

Warning

Everything here is a work in progress. This is not an official WGU resource.

Welcome to C952, Computer Architecture! This course is an interactive survey of Computer Architecture based on Patterson and Hennessy’s widely used text Computer Organization and Design (referred to as COD in my books). The textbook has a lot of great and exciting information. But while the textbook is both deep and broad, the assessment is just broad. In general, students have found the exam more accessible than the textbook (take a look at the course chatter). The objective assessment assesses an introductory depth of the content. As such, students should focus on understanding the significant concepts in context with a focus on optimization.

See the depreciated C952 website webpage. WGU blocks access ro Google resources. So you may need to open the link in a private browser.

Resources#

C952 Computational Problems#

Note

  • These problems are written to reflect the sytle of the assessments which may differ from what you’ll see in other Computer Scicence resources.

  • These problems are code generated. So I can easily make more on request.

Binary and pipelining problems

Some other computaitonal problems

C952 Pre-Assessment#

  • C952 alternative pre-assessment Coming soon.

Pre-A review 1-9

Pre-A review 10-22

Pre-A review 23-32

Passing the Objective Assessment#

Consider taking the pre-assessment before reading the material. As you then will be able to gauge the knowledge level targeted by the assessment. Here are some other tips:

  • Vocabulary is critical. Know all the words that show up on the preassessment -incorrect choices included. You don’t need to memorize everything; you’ll need to be able to recall things in context. Here’s a collection of C952 terms to know.

  • Treat the assembly code like pseudocode. Don’t worry about the differences between LEG and ARM. Know ADD, SUB, branching, and how it relates to higher-level code.

  • Ace the computational problems. Students have repeatedly told me that assessment CPU-time problems are similar in difficulty and scope to those on the pre-assessment. So let’s cash in on this. Knowing all those formulas is unnecessary. Here are some C952 practice problems and C952 practice problems -solutions (see the associated webinars above).