Embedding a sense of history in the computing curriculum: Historic influences on a custom CPU instruction set

Abstract

History can serve as a connecting thread bonding students to their professional community and intellectual heritage. Many STEM disciplines, such as physics and biology, consistently integrate historic figures into the curriculum. Computer Science, on the other hand, often omits history from the instructional landscape. As a step to mitigate the situation, this work explores some of the historic design influences behind a custom, robot enabled, CPU and corresponding instruction set. The CPU design has been the basis for student-implemented emulators to control robots in a Computer Organization course. By featuring a sampling of the men, women, machines, and instruction sets from history we provide a design context for the custom CPU. Knowing this history may help students develop a sense of why things work the way they do in modern computers, as well as instilling a sense of the enormous contribution pioneering men and women have made to their discipline.