MIT 6.004: Computation Structures

Somewhat related: looks like Prof. Harry Lewis is also teaching a class on &quot;Classic CS&quot; during the Spring 2020 term at MIT.<p>&quot;This subject examines papers every computer scientist should have read, with an emphasis on the period from the 1930s to the 1980s. It is meant to be a synthesizing experience for advanced students in computer science: a way for them to see the field as a whole, not through a survey, but by reliving the experience of its creation, relating the original work to the field as it exists today. The aim is to create a unified view of the field by replaying its entire evolution at an accelerated rate, giving students the opportunity to become sophisticated generalists&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eecs.mit.edu&#x2F;academics-admissions&#x2F;academic-information&#x2F;subject-updates-spring-2020&#x2F;6s897" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eecs.mit.edu&#x2F;academics-admissions&#x2F;academic-infor...</a>

wow. setup and hold times have been demoted to &#x27;demystification only&#x27; and not something that is part of the formal curriculum. when I helped teach this course in the 90&#x27;s, it was a major section and if you could not answer basic questions about synchronous clock discipline, you could not get an A. It was as important as stack-based calling conventions.<p>I mean, I guess most &#x27;computer science&#x27; folks today can have a fecund and profitable career and have never heard of these concepts, but... I hope some people still wonder, why do we have clock speeds, and what other alternatives might exist?

This seems very comprehensive and beautifully comprehensible.<p>It reminds me closely of <i>The Elements of Computing Systems</i> and its companion web-based incarnation <i>Nand2Tetris</i> available at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nand2tetris.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nand2tetris.org&#x2F;</a>

It seems MIT changes the url:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;6004.mit.edu&#x2F;web&#x2F;fall19FA19&#x2F;resources&#x2F;lectures" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;6004.mit.edu&#x2F;web&#x2F;fall19FA19&#x2F;resources&#x2F;lectures</a>

Last time I looked at MIT 6.004 the lecture slides seemed like they were useless without the speaker but there were no videos so I moved on.<p>Looks like there&#x27;s been an update since so will take another look...

I kind of like their Minispec HDL - I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve seen it before though I guess it derives from Bluespec. I have always liked Wirth&#x27;s Lola as well.<p>Verilog and VHDL are serviceable, but I think there is an advantage to having a simple, friendly syntax without the verbosity and overhead of VHDL.<p>I also liked how Wirth&#x27;s course involved running on FPGA hardware. It looks like you might be able to do that in the MIT course as well although I didn&#x27;t see specific labs for it.

I was hoping to learn about GPU and neural network accelerator architectures. This seems like a conspicuous absence in the course.

Is the site just temporarily down? I was watching one of the lecture videos and when I came back to the site I got a 502 error.

I get 502 error