First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Konrad Zuse's Legacy: The Architecture of the Z1 and Z3
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
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Motivating computer science students to study computer architecture can be difficult, especially when complex, modern architectures such as the Intel® Core™ i7 are held up as examples. The solution presented here is to introduce computer architecture by first teaching students how to program simpler, historic machines such as Konrad Zuse's Z1, the Manchester Baby, and the Princeton IAS machine. The limitations of these machines can then be used to motivate students to learn the principles of addressing modes, instruction set architectures, and CPU register design. These early architectures can demonstrate how much, and how little, has changed in the area of computer architecture. This paper summarizes the results of research into the machine language instruction sets and architectures of the Zuse Z1, the Manchester Baby, and the Princeton IAS machine. It then presents examples of how these instruction sets can be used to motivate students in a senior-level computer architecture course.