SDC CS306 Computer architecture experience

[hsufeng]

If you think about studying computer architecture, it seems like study.com is the cheapest option... so considering the budget, there is no choice.
Before I started this course, I saw a lot of negative reviews, especially about Assignment 1. I received my Assignment 1 grade today and am wrapping up the course, so perhaps I can share a few experiences.

If you just want to get credit for this course, I think homework 1 is a pretty time-consuming option... If you can get 90% on the quizs and a perfect score on homework 2 (which is easy, they give you detailed feedback on the homework and you just submit it again based on the feedback), then you only need a 70% on the final exam to pass this course. Does 70% seem difficult? I thought so too when I started this proctored exam. I had taken the proctored exam for the history of the Vietnam War before. The style of the questions at the end was very different from the style of the quizs, and I thought it was very difficult. But in fact, the content of the CS306 proctored exam is basically the simplest concept analysis. I even think it is easier than the usual quizzes. Because there is no question in the quiz that asks you to choose what the component image of XOR and AND is. So if you practice many mock exams, you will get a good score on the proctored exam.

If you take a proctored exam and then find out that you are a few points short of passing... and then have to do homework 1. Then maybe you can refer to my experience. They were actually pretty lenient on assignment 1... I was pretty sure my ALU didn't work at the end, but they gave me full credit anyway... (which means as long as you draw the main structure, they'll at least give you some scores...

1. In the first stage you need to come up with some new structures, here I suggest you write some 8-bit Boolean operations, because this is easy to implement in the following logisim, then you can easily get all the points in the first part. You can choose 9 simplest structures to implement. If you have no idea how to draw these structures, and don't know how to verify whether your final structure is correct, you can refer to circuitverse. This is what I learned from reddit, and I believe if you are planning to take this course, you have also seen that post. This website will give you a lot of 8-bit structures, and you just need to draw them according to them.

2. The second part of the table is easy to score. You can easily find how to complete it from the website. Then draw the MUX, the control unit and the last ALU. My suggestion is to refer to the 4-bit structure they give. You will find that the MUX is a selector, and then refer to the 4-bit structure. For the rest, you can completely repeat the 4-bit image, just change the input and output to 8-bit. Maybe this is not the correct answer, but it is enough if you want to get the points... I really hope they can give me a correct structure for reference, but apparently they don't spend too much work on this assignment to give feedback.

This course is not as good as I expected, there is not enough connection between the parts, they just put the material together loosely. The first hardest homework, they did not give a more detailed tutorial to explain many details, so many people will buy other courses to learn how to draw ALU... but fortunately they do not have high requirements for homework. So be it, at least we were able to get credits cheaply and learn something...even if the experience wasn't good.